all worthy places
by YellowFlicker
Summary: They say if you get hungry enough, you start eating your own heart. When she kisses his mouth like she wants to eat him alive, Oliver believes it. [inspired by 'god himself would call it justice' by geneeste]
1. Chapter 1

_"Trauma impels people both to withdraw from close relationships and to seek them desperately. The profound disruption in basic trust, the common feelings of shame, guilt, and inferiority, and the need to avoid reminders of the trauma that might be found in social life, all foster withdrawal from close relationships. But the terror of the traumatic event intensifies the need for protective attachments. The traumatized person therefore frequently alternates between isolation and anxious clinging to others. […] It results in the formation of intense, unstable relationships that fluctuate between extremes."_

\- Judith L. Herman

* * *

Chapter 1: stronger than grief

 _"Some stories you carry around in your heart. Others live in the throat, in the skull, in the fangs — all worthy places, too."_

 _\- Natalia Antonova, "His Sin, Her Soul" from The Second Pass_

Years ago, before he really knew her, he used to look at Felicity and wonder if she ever got that suffocating urge to just catapult herself out of her life.

He knew Sara did. That she needed to pick up and leave sometimes. But Sara's need to move was a fierce kind of reach for freedom. For new places, adventures, people. It was how she recognized home: by missing it. In Oliver, the need to run was not so noble, nor as honest. Escape for him was just another way of not caring. Another way of being too exhausted to live, but too stubborn to die.

Sometimes the random 4 am thought would make him wonder what something like that would look like on someone like Felicity. ( _maybe this was the place from where all his fantasies about going away with her started._ ) It used to be a half-hearted kind of speculation, because he'd never really believed Felicity needed escape to be free. She had looked as perfectly at her ease in her cubicle as she had in her office. She had _made_ herself belong in the foundry. Even on Lian Yu, at the edge of the world, she'd made herself belong, because despite everything, he'd been glad to see her there.

To someone like him, who had had survived the world by shedding his sense of self time after time, the way she made the world fit her, and not the other way around, had seemed like a miracle. Her ability to plant her feet, stare at anyone dead in the eye and say ' _No. You move._ ' had been so surprising that it managed to catch him by surprise every time.

( _It's how he knows it's real when she says it's over_. _He had expected it the whole time and it still left him breathless.)_

These days he watches her her from the other end of the bunker, the light of the screens painting her face with a subtle blue hue that makes her look like she's six feet under water, and wonders how much it cost her to plant her feet this time. ( _There's always a price. Felicity doesn't need to go anywhere to be free, but she's not one to linger on the scene of the crime either. It's just harder to notice with her because there's no hesitation between her making up her mind and her willingness to pay for it_.) He look for the toll of it in her eyes, but he doesn't have a name for what he sees there. The dark smudges of exhaustion under her eyes, the way she can spend hours on end without saying a single word, but keeps chasing the next wrong to make right with a touch of obsessive energy, makes Oliver wonder if it would have been easier for her to leave. Better, maybe? He knows she has it in her. She's left him before plenty of times.

It still feels a little strange. Felicity, leaving him….

She's never left him on the battlefield. She put her life in his hands long before he had any idea what to do with that kind of trust, other than to put his body between her and anything threatening her. It used to _terrify_ him, how she just jumped and trusted him to catch her, after what had felt like a flat three seconds after meeting him. ( _there's a kind of irony there: that she trusted him with her life but not with her heart. But it's too sad and though he might believe he's too broken to be loved, he can never believe Felicity capable of that kind of lie. If she'd thought that, she wouldn't have been with him_.)

It seems a cruel cosmic joke now, that he'd never understood how ' _if you're not leaving, I'm not leaving_ ' and ' _this far and no further_ ' could live fully within the same person, without contradiction.

He understands when she leaves him and understands _Felicity_ better when she stays in the end, to pick up the pieces. And even that time, she manages to catch him by surprise.

 _Always the surprise with you…_

She tries very hard to act like herself. It works on Curtis, on people who don't know her as well as he does, but there is this thin cloud of perpetual sadness pinching the corners of her lips, hollowing out her eyes that Oliver cannot miss. He can't do anything about it either. Unless they're getting too close to having a real conversation – in which case she'll babble her way into random tangents until he takes a hint and backs off - she talks little and says less. Their silences are heavy, the unsaid words accumulating in corners, like shiny little knives piling up in the dark.

He can sense her eyes on him sometimes and knows she bites her lips instead of speaking. He feels he has to lock his knees every time she opens her mouth: the room might explode in blood one day, if she lets out everything she has been chewing on.

The room might explode in blood without her ever saying a single word: between the two of them there is enough loss and anger to raze the whole city to the ground.

But they don't talk about that either.

There is something… _else_ happening.

He can _sense_ it, the way he can sense a storm coming: the change of the wind, the static in the thickening air. It's in the way she sets apart the variables and leaves all the choices to him, instead of making the best one herself. In the things she says sometimes, about herself, and how they make him feel like she's walking at an angle, tilted to the wind, a breath away from falling. Sometimes Oliver feels like taking her by the shoulders and yelling in her face, 'J _ust let me in. I'll do anything. I'll do_ anything _for you, just ask me_.'

It's wishful thinking, of course. Felicity doesn't ask for help anymore than he does. ( _she explained it to him that night, after they found Palmer. Laying side by side, her thigh between his and her hand on his cheek, she'd let it go quietly, like a secret._

 _'I've been surviving on my own since I was a kid; it's habit.'_

 _She'd said 'I'm sorry' and he'd said 'I love you' and that's how he'd ended up spending more of that night inside her than not._ )

He wishes he were brave enough to just talk to her, but then remembers she might hate him and he doesn't want to give her a reason to actually _say_ it.

He doesn't know how he would breathe through that.

But the tide turns on that too.

It's not something specific that changes his mind; no tangible cause or reason. It just happens. He looks at her hitting a dummy relentlessly one day, her stance perfect and her hits powerful; watches the angry bruises blooming over her knuckles days later, and remembers. He knows what happens to things that don't bend.

It's not an answer - there was no question – but it _is_ a direction, a decision. _She_ matters more than everything else he's afraid of.

( _Later on he'll wonder if_ that _moment was where it truly started_ )

He is thinking about the briefing on the urban restructuring projects for the Glades when he steps out of the elevator - which is why he doesn't immediately notice. But even these days, the first thing his eyes search for in any room is her, so when he spots her by the conference table, Oliver stops, taken aback.

She's slumped on the table, her head resting on her arms, her back bent at an angle that he _knows_ will give her neck cramps when she wakes up. One of her bright pink heels has slipped off her foot and he can see her unpainted toes as he gets closer. She looks pale under the white lights of the bunker, and there's a little frown pulling her eyebrows together.

Even in her sleep she looks unhappy.

Oliver thinks about it for perhaps 10 minutes, and then makes up his mind. He takes off his jacket and hangs it on the back of one of the chairs so that he can move more easily. He crouches and pulls her in slowly towards him, so that her head moves to rest on his shoulder, wraps his arm around her back, the other under her knees and lifts her up with every bit of gentleness he's capable of. The weight of her in his arms startles him. She'd lost weight after she was shot, but gained it slowly, after. Now she feels almost too light for it to really be _her_ , and suddenly there's a fist tightening where his throat used to be.

He's careful when he lays her on the bed, in the makeshift bedroom of the bunker. He covers her with a blanket, takes off her glasses and remaining shoe and places both of them neatly by the bed, before he tucks the blanket in around her feet the way she likes - a habit he'd picked up from when she was… when she couldn't shift the blanket on her own.

He walks out without a sound, wondering how he'll manage to talk to her about any of this, when she's gone from being fixed star of certainty into his sky, to becoming the absence under his feet.

In the end he doesn't need to worry, because his plans get derailed spectacularly.

It starts with him hearing her whimper from the other room. She's scared herself right out of sleep by the time he gets to the door to check on her.

She's sitting on the side of the bed, folded onto herself.

He kneels in front of her before he thinks better of it, hesitating for one moment before his hands settle on her arms. He keeps his voice low and reminds her to breathe, because she's not and it scares him. Felicity looks up, her eyes going straight through him. She looks like she has no idea where she even is for a moment and it's a wonder the sight of it doesn't knock him on his ass.

He rubs his hands up and down her bare arms, keeps talking to her. Tells her she's in the bunker, that she's safe and that she has to keep breathing. He wishes he had an ice cube to press against her palm, but he doesn't, so he cups the back of her neck, pressing his fingers against her skin with steady pressure.

"Oh my god…" her face crumbles and she bites her lip so hard that she almost breaks skin. She stands up so fast that she almost makes Oliver lose footing. Paces, shaking out her arms as if they're numb, passing a trembling hand through her hair a couple of times. She undoes her falling ponytail viciously when her fingers catch on it. He winces for her.

"I'm _fine_. Everything's fine." She nods a little to herself, as if she can ' _mind over matter_ ' her way through it. She's been trying so hard at 'fine' for weeks; he honestly doesn't think he can stand to watch her try any harder.

"I'm sorry."

Oliver frowns. Sorry? What does she have to be sorry about?

"It's okay." He hears himself say anyway, even though nothing about this is okay. She's not okay – she's the farthest thing from it and for once, Oliver is the one who doesn't want to ignore the obvious. But before he can say anything she walks out. Oliver watches her go and then turns to where she forgot her shoes. One of them has tipped over to the side, the sharp heel looking elegant and dangerous, and for some reason it makes him want to scream.

He takes a breath and picks her shoes up instead, follows her out.

She's already settled on her chair, tapping the different keyboards and waking up her systems. She sits there with her hair a mess of waves, her lipstick faded and her mascara smudged around her eyes after having wiped her face dry, and all Oliver can think of is how she wears her lipstick like it's her uniform and thinks she's 'suiting up' every time she puts on a dress she loves. All that means nothing, really; she could be wearing pajamas for all Oliver cares, but the cognitive dissonance is in the fact that she doesn't seem to notice at all.

"So, I wasn't getting anywhere – or to anyone - using the old search algorithm, so last night I wrote another one."

"Last night." So no sleeping, then.

"Yeah. I added the new data that you picked up – and we've got something. I've got a couple of locations that might be worth checking out and this here, here and here are-"

He knows what she wants him to do. This is his que: to pretend. To look away. But he can't. It's been feeling like betrayal for too long.

Instead he walks over to her station, slowly, trying to keep the expression on his face as neutral as possible, and sets her shoes down by her chair. Felicity glances at him, as if giving into half-hearted curiosity as to how he's getting so close all of a sudden, and then blinks. She looks at her heels for long moments, their bright pink hue strangely harsh under the industrial lights of the bunker, then glances at her bare feet. She looks like she can't understand _why_ she's seeing what she's seeing - until she _does_ , and her toes curl in almost at the same time as her shoulders do.

There's something about the helplessness of watching the pain of someone he loves, that makes Oliver's bones feel heavy. Out of all the flavors of pain he's sampled, this is the one that he hates the most.

He wants to reach for her, lay a hand on her shoulder to remind her that he's still there. That he wants to help. That she's not alone. It seems to be the only thing left to them and he's desperate not to lose that too, but when Felicity purses her lips stubbornly and shakes her head, he knows it won't be that easy.

( _Nothing has been for a while now; he's forgotten what easy feels like_.)

The tears in her eyes don't fall. Of course they don't. She's too stubborn to cry in front of him.

"I'm becoming more and more of a scatterbrain these days, huh? No wonder we're having such a low success rate out there." Her voice is rough and her laughter strained. It takes two tries for her to slip her feet back in her shoes. "I don't mean you, by the way. You're doing great – though I think you might wanna cut down on the hours here a little bit, Mister Mayor. But time-off is _not_ good for me. I haven't done nothing since I was 11 years old, maybe even before that, I'm just not used to it."

She combs her hands through her hair carelessly and pulls it back, wraps her elastic band around it four times. If he'd known nothing else about her, the tightness of her ponytail would have told him all he needs to know.

"I think we need to take a minute."

"No, we don't." Felicity counters quickly, and then tries to soften it with a smile that makes him want to look away. "I just told you, I wouldn't know what to do with it. And the SCPD finally has the full report on the activity we've noticed by the bay, so I've got actual real locations for you to check out. Two by the port and one in the industrial area just on the outskirts of the city. According to our not-so-friendly police force, there's been some unusual movements there lately, and they think it might be-"

"Felicity…"

" _Stop_ saying my name like that!" She snaps, and Oliver tenses. He watches her grimace, her fingers pressing against her temples. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that."

"Yes, you did."

She looks at him and he stares back, makes a careful study of her face. He knows it so well, he can trace every line fatigue has left on it, chronologically.

"You think just because we're not together anymore, I wouldn't be able to tell when you're unhappy? That i wouldn't know why?"

She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath. "I really need you to let this go, Oliver."

Those are the first words she's said to him in a while that feel honest.

He sighs, understanding; but not accepting. "I can't do that."

"Well, _find_ a way to do it."

So he amends. "I could. But I won't."

Felicity narrows her eyes at him, lips pinched with barely contained anger and then turns back to her computers, the line of her shoulders tight with tension.

She's freezing him out. She's done it before.

"Remember last summer, how I wanted you to leave the room any time I had a nightmare I couldn't wake up from on my own? And you-"

"This is _nothing_ like that!"

"-and you bought a water-gun and decided that you would spray me with it from the corner of the room, to wake me up, because you didn't want to leave me alone when I was like that?"

Her bottom lip shakes, but the look she's giving him is sharp with anger and hurt. And he remembers then, as if out of the blue, that the reason for their booby-trapped silences had been that unspoken agreement between them: that they wouldn't poke at each other's wounds. That they'd look away when they bled through the hastily made-up band aids slapped over them. They might have lost their relationship, but neither had wanted to lose the friendship that helped build it. And at first it had felt like a mercy, because it would still keep them around each other, but that feels so long ago that Oliver has almost forgotten why they ever thought it was a good idea.

And either way, he'd just destroyed it in one sentence.

For once, he's not sorry.

"That's not fair." She tells him slowly.

"No, it's not. But you're still my friend and I'm worried about you."

Felicity shakes her head minutely. "You don't get to be worried about me anymore."

He presses down on the irritation like he would on a particularly stubborn wound. "That's not your call to make."

She scoffs, gets up so fast the chair rolls backwards, and stalks away from him.

"That is rich coming from you."

Her words smart right as she means them to. It's why he ignores them. She's just trying to distract him.

"It's not going to just go away, Felicity." Oliver calls after her. "Whatever's going on with you – if you keep pretending it's not happening, it's just going to get worse."

"I'm fine."

"So you say."

"And this – this is the weirdest déjà vu ever, by the way." Felicity mumbles, the bitterness in her voice underscored by the fact that it cracks at the end. She's crumbling the papers scattered on the conference table in her haste to collect them and leave.

"You're the one that told me not to talk to you like you were other people." He reminds her. Felicity stops shoving her files into her bag, stops moving, stops breathing. He doesn't miss the way she's shaking. "I thought that went both ways."

She turns away from him, and Oliver feels guilt well up to the point where he can't ignore it anymore.

"You know, it's rude to throw someone's word in their face like that," she tells him quietly, leaning on the table with both hands, like that's the only thing holding her up. There's nothing in her voice, no accusation, no hurt. Maybe that's better.

"Never really been known for my manners." Not as Oliver Queen, nor as the vigilante. At least he's consistent.

She snorts. "Remember the old ladies in Tuscany?"

He does. For a moment it rather takes his breath away that _she_ does.

They'd been staying in a random little town for the weekend. The whole sunday night the piazza had been filled with people dancing and eating from the various food stands propped around the town square, celebrating. They stayed up almost till dawn and on the bus back, Felicity sat on his lap because there were no other free seats. She'd fallen asleep a little, with her face tucked into his neck and it made the old women sitting in front of them smile. One of them patted his cheek as they got off to their stop, laughing between them, talking about ' _i rari giovani gentiluomini'_.

Felicity had loved it. She'd teased him about it for days.

She'd loved the fireworks that night too. He remembers it so vividly, how she'd taken his hand and held it _so tight_...

Oliver curls his fingers into a fists.

" _They_ thought you had great manners." She says, her voice low as if she's speaking to herself.

He can't breathe for a moment. But then she's settling her bag over her shoulder, and Oliver realizes he hadn't even noticed when she'd finished gathering her things and Oliver realizes that this is a distraction too.

This one Oliver can't swallow so easily. He can roll with the little sharp pokes. He's been dealing with them most his life - though he'd be lying if he said it's the same coming from her. But Felicity using their memories together to shove him off her is new.

It hurts…

"Alright. I understand." Slow. Deliberate. "You don't have to talk to me, but _at least_ talk to someone, Felicity."

Maybe it comes out a bit harsher than he intended. Maybe not. It doesn't seem to touch her, either way.

She scoffs. "Oh, yeah? Assuming that you have a point, which you don't - who would I talk to? John's gone. I can't put any of this on Thea, because she deserves a clean break if she wants one and Curtis is great, but he really doesn't have a frame of reference for _any_ of it." She shakes her head, the expression on her face opaque, as if the lonely picture she is painting with her words does not belong to her. "Lyla already has enough on her plate, and _Laurel_ …"

Her voice cracks then, and Oliver looks away, shifts on his feet, takes a breath.

They stand there ruins of who they used to be, unable to reach out to the other to do something about it.

Unable maybe, but not unwilling to try.

"I know that I wasn't… that I made mistakes and wasn't the best…" best what? Boyfriend? Fiancé? Teammate? He'd picked up each of these titles and fucked them up, so really, what was he trying to say here? Oliver swallows and tries again. "I wasn't the best partner. And not even a good friend to you before that, but I can be better." This here and now is the easy part, because he means it. "Just let me help, Felicity. I just want to help."

Felicity sighs and shakes her head just a fraction. Passes a hand over her ponytail, eyes closed.

"I know you do, but this isn't something you or anyone can fix. I'm… I'm just tired." She admits it with a kind of helplessness that has just a little too much effort behind it. "It's fine."

He stares at her hard, without blinking, as if he can make something real crawl up her throat by sheer strength of will. "You're lying."

The look she gives him could almost be surprised. Her lips quirk upwards in a smile that doesn't reach her eyes. It feels like being touched on the cheek with the flat part of a knife.

"You really want to go there?" she says flatly.

Oliver clenches his jaw. Some weeks ago she would have said something along the lines of ' _well, you should know_ ', so he counts himself lucky that her pain has dulled enough that she doesn't want to hurt him with it anymore. He waits, instead. Waits for her to say something else, something _real_ , but nothing comes and then he realizes that this is it. This is it for him.

This far, and no further.

 _(There is always a price. Always._ )

Oliver takes a deep breath, presses the heel of his palm against his eyes. This time, just like every other time before it, he can't _make_ her do anything. If alone is where she thinks she needs or wants to be, then he can't force her out of it. But he's going to pay the price right along with her.

"Alright. Okay. No talking. Let's not... fucking talk anymore. Okay."

It's how he ends up sitting on the chair next to hers on the conference table, a bottle of vodka between them, two glasses and her bag forgotten on the ground. They're both alone in here, but they can be alone together. He doesn't think about it too long - what little sense there is in it will unravel if he does.

"I won't say anything at all; I'll just… be here, with you. How's that sound?"

Felicity doesn't answer. But she's not leaving yet, so he takes that as acceptance.

"John and I would do this sometimes." He continues, softer now, as he uncaps the bottle. He tries to remind himself this shouldn't hurt, that it's not an ending. That John is still out there, hurting and alone like them, but _alive_ \- no matter how much he sees his ghost in Felicity's eyes.

"Boys only, huh?"

He huffs, tries to smile but fails. He's too heavy for it. "Something like that."

It's not like that at all, actually. They've gone out for drinks plenty of times as a team.

He and Felicity on the other hand, are used to do a different kind of drinking.

Oliver keeps his eyes stubbornly locked on the glass in front of him, because he is sure that they're both thinking about the last time they had a strong drink like this together and he doesn't want to see the memory written out on her face; same as she probably doesn't want to see it in his.

( _It comes anyway, because his mind doesn't care about his sanity_. _It had been tequila in Ivy Town._

 _Body shots had seemed like an_ excellent _idea, because nothing had seemed better than licking salt off the side of her soft breast except taking a gentle bite of it._

 _He'd never before laughed that much during sex. Or seen anything hotter than her sitting up on him, hands pressed to his pecks to hold him down, nails biting into his skin, riding him so hard they shook the whole bed, till he sobbed and saw little starbursts when he closed his eyes._

 _The memory of it now is ridiculous, and it feels like holding on tight to barbed wire.)_

Oliver passes her the glass slowly, maybe because he expects her to protest. She doesn't. She just reaches for her drink and downs it in a breath, scrunching up her face at the taste. Vodka was never her favorite and she never made it a secret. For some reason, Oliver always found that hilarious.

Felicity shakes her head and purses her lips in distaste. "Ugh. Gross."

But she holds out her glass for another shot. Oliver obliges, pouring for himself too.

"No red wine close at hand. Sorry."

"Takes too long to get drunk on wine anyway." She looks at him with glassy eyes. "What's that word you use? The one in Russian?"

"Prochnost."

"Yes, that. 'Strength', right?"

"Yeah."

The twist of her lips comes along unwilling, soaked through in sadness. "Great. Let's toast to that. Prochnost."

She butchers the pronunciation enough that it's funny, and downs the second glass all at once, just like the first. Oliver keeps his eyes on her as he drinks his own, the second shot waking a warm spark in his belly, spreading the heat outwards. Getting shitfaced with her wasn't what he'd intended when he broke out the vodka, but Felicity sets a fast pace and he feels he can't leave her alone in that either.

"To 2016." She says at their third shot, slow enough that Oliver knows she's good and buzzed. "Just be _over_ already, you have _made_ your _point_!"

Oliver smiles. He can't help it.

She's tired, drained and faded - and possibly three more shots away from a good cry, but she's still Felicity. She's still _Felicity_ and whenever he lets himself feel it, he has to stop himself from rubbing a hand over his chest where the ache blooms.

In his own way he's still pretending, because he's still as much in love with her as ever and he still wants her back. It all makes being around her hurt in a strange, fractional way, like walking around barefoot on shards of glass, sometimes feeling it, sometimes not [1] .

After the third shot, he starts feeling warm and loose, his thoughts slower along the paths of his mind. He gets up to get them both two small bottles of water - mostly for Felicity's benefit. She drinks the water in smaller sips than the vodka.

He asks her about John. John is as good a topic as any.

She still can't believe that he's all the way on the other side of the world – it's in her voice when she talks about him, a sort of shell-shocked incredulity sticks to her words.

So maybe John isn't that safe after all. But then again, there's a shell-shocked aftertaste to everything about Felicity these days.

Oliver's eyes wander and fix on the costumes hanging on the mannequins on the other side of the room and he can't tear them away. He's edging on a pit he knows well, he could easily fall into it. There's almost a sense of familiarity about it. About the abyss staring him hard in his face is almost a friend now. He looks over at where Felicity is sitting, glass precariously dangling from her fingers, bare feet looking pale and cold, her eyes fixed ahead with that thousand yard stare going nowhere that makes cold chills rattle up his backbone.

He can't fall. Can't slip or give in. He has to hold on and keep an eye on her, because she's right there with him, tipping over too, but no abyss may ever have her as long as he's breathing.

She passes a hand through her hair as if to brush away some thought she'd never confess, and then flinches, when that is not enough. It's an exercise in self control, watching the expressions her face goes through. How lip-shaking misery changes into anger and exhaustion until she slams her glass hard on the table. It slides away and falls off from the other side, shattering.

Neither one of them cares much. Oliver actually likes the sound of it. Something here _should_ be breaking - as long as it's not them.

"I'm tired of thinking!" The words burst out of her angrily, if not a little desperately, as if they'd been in the middle of a conversation. It doesn't surprise him. She does that all the time. "Let's not… not fucking _think_ for a while."

That's a strange choice of words, in Oliver's opinion. Especially considering their history with how to get her not to think. It makes him frown, unsure of what to do ( _what she means, what she wants_ ). Felicity though, gets on her feet. She stumbles only a little. He reaches to steady instinctively, but before he can fully stand, she's in his space – too close for comfort or safety - and he stops, sits back down, looks up at her with his heart in his throat.

The heat radiates from his stomach to his lungs, thighs; spreads through his every vein. His fingertips feel numb.

He knows it's not the alcohol.

"You said you wanted to help." The unfallen tears make her eyes shine like glinting stones under the sun.

"I did." More than anything. "I do."

"What's stopping you?"

Oliver heaves a breath, leans forward, just a little bit. "Felicity…"

It sounds like he's pleading, but he has no idea what he's asking for. Something gentle maybe….

She shuffles closer still, the flaring orange skirt of her dress fluttering around her thighs, against his jeans. Her leg is so close, he can feel the heat of her skin against the back of his hand. So _close_ and open, for the first time in so long, that he can see the hurt in her eyes, begging to be wiped away.

Uncertainty flickers there too, cheeks heating with embarrassment when he hesitates a moment too long. A second more and she'll retreat, thinking he doesn't want her, so Oliver lets go of a shaky breath and touches the backs of his fingers to the soft skin just over her knee and tries to remember how to get another breath back into his lungs.

She sighs, skims her fingers down his arm. Need hisses inside him like hot metal dipped in water.

He knows what this moment is. He's always known a bad idea when he's stood in front of one. Without exception, he's known. So he is 110 percent positive that what's staring at him full in the face right now with the wide blue eyes of the woman he loves, is one of the worst ideas he's ever had. He knows, because he wants it so badly he can hardly breathe, even though he can already taste the ashes of it in the back of his mouth.

"Fucking, not thinking?" his voice is so thick and heavy, it makes its way up with difficulty, scraping along his throat.

Felicity bends her knee, touches it to the inside of his thigh. His fingers slip to the back of her knee without any thought, just desire floating in warmth. There, where her skin is so soft it makes him tremble a little.

He wants her so much it feels like starvation. He misses every part of her, even the screaming ones. He wants all of it. All of her. Even the faint air of disappointment that hangs around her shoulders like a second skin; even her greyness and that layer of grief, fine as ash, just beneath the surface. He wants to hold her until she stops hurting. Kiss her until she blooms alive beneath him, until there is no world beyond the two of them and what they make with their bodies. He wants her to scoop him out of his body the way she used to, the way only she can.

He _wants_ , but he's afraid.

Afraid of her eyes, how dark they are and how they have none of the love that used to warm them before. He's afraid to touch her for fear of bruising something far more precious that might lurk beneath her anger and her hurt. He's afraid for _himself_ and what will be left of him after this, because he knows her better than to think this changes anything. But that's an afterthought.

He's afraid and she's empty, and they really are quite a pair.

 _I just want to help..._

When he was on the island, there came a point when Oliver sort of- lost his capacity for feeling. The guilt, the concern, the shame - even the fear fell away, and he woke up to a sharp, ruthless sort of living. He'd walked through hell leaving behind the piece of himself with the capacity for caring, and that's how he'd survived. When he came back home, some of it had come back to him, but there had been so many times when he'd done horrible things to people, people he loved, and felt nothing. Times when he used to think there wasn't enough of a person left in him to care. That maybe he just _couldn't_.

Or maybe he had been born selfish.

Either way, when the gaping holes inside him left no energy for the struggle of living, he'd survived off the easy things instead. He had taken and taken and there had been no guilt. And it had felt good. It had felt like _something_ that wasn't fucking awful.

Oliver looks up from where his hand is drawing little circles on her thigh, to her face - and there she is: a shadow of the woman he fell in love with. She looks back at him, beautiful, terrible, starving from the soul, and Oliver realizes there is no truth beyond this: he loves her.

He can scoop up all the parts of himself and set them side by side, and all of them love her. The old parts and the ones that grew in the empty places love her. His ruthless ones and the ugly ones, his goodness and his violence and everything in between. Even his solitude loves her.

He slides his hand up the inside of her thigh and she tilts her head to the side, looking at him through heavy lids. He finds her where she's warm and alive, his thumb pressing down, and her nails drag over the skin of his shoulders. She grabs fistfuls of his T-shirt, her bottom lip caught with her teeth. He's sweating, hands shaking. She straddles him in the chair, thighs on either side of his hips, arms around his neck. His hand finds the back of her neck, gathers her hair into a loose fist and brings her face close.

He wants to stay there with her pressed against him, breathing the air from her lips for hours, but she leans in, her lips fitting to his, her tongue sliding over them… and Oliver falls back with the feel of it all.

He lets it become simple again. She needs, he gives, they both take and that is it. That's it. If easy is what she wants, he will give it. If not caring is how she manages to take one breath after another, he will help her. He will breathe into her with his own lungs if he has to.

 _Whatever you need. Anything. I'll do anything. … If it's you asking…_

They say if you get hungry enough, you start eating your own heart. When she kisses him like she wants to eat him alive, Oliver believes it. He kisses her back with the same hunger, no apologies, no pretenses. He loved her when she tasted of summer, he will kneel in front of her pain and love her when she tastes of war.

He knows no other way.

* * *

[1] Scherezade Siobhan, from "Father, Husband"

[1] Charles Bukowski


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: bigger than god

 _what's it like crawling  
back into the trenches?  
can you win a war  
without telling anyone about it?"_

 _— Eliel Vera, from Styx in Narcissus (via myth-boy)_

They haven't fucked like this in a long time. ( _haven't been this desperate for longer still._ ) It goes on for hours, with their hands, mouths, their bodies sliding over each other, in every way they can think how. Pausing, stopping to breathe and then back again, desire slashing through to the last nerve, under and above[1].

She goes straight to his head faster than the alcohol.

At first the headiness of it all is so insistent ( _need to touch, to be as close to her as skin_ ) that he can't even _think_ about what he wants or how to make her feel good. She grabs at him, hands down his arms, over his chest, squeezing him through his pants, and he could bend her over the table then and there.

He does. Lifts her up right on the edge. She opens her legs, pulls him between them and Oliver makes her come with his fingers before he ever puts his mouth on her. He kisses his way to where she's warm and wet and human, kisses the hands that try to stop him, till she lets go. _(She doesn't want anything too close to what they used to be, but he doesn't know how to give her anything else_ ) He stays there until she tunnels both her hands in his hair and when her breath catches and she starts panting the way she does when she's close, Oliver moves, fills his mouth with the soft flesh of her thigh and _bites_.

She comes with a surprised shout, the muscles of her thigh flexing under his lips. He marvels at the miracle of it. And that is all he wants, all his happiness is right there. ( _In loving her, drowning her in kisses and devouring all her ripe beauty, one bite at a time, thinking this, too, is a form of worship_.) She arches off the table, shaking, and Oliver shakes with her, because he's so _hungry_ , god, he's starving.

He kisses her and she holds his face, the back of his neck, sucks on the tip of his tongue. Oliver's knees give, pressing his weight into her suddenly with a helpless groan.

They lose finesse for frenzy and can't get it back, because she doesn't want it. She shoves them both into something rough, frantic. They fuck straight past slowness, gentleness or caring, barreling through desperation and landing somewhere unknown beyond it. On the desk, on the chair with her dress shoved down around her waist and one nipple pressed against the roof of his mouth.

She showers first and Oliver could have sworn she would leave then, but when she comes out of the bathroom, she drops the towel instead. They end up on the bed with his hips snapping into her from behind, face shoved against her neck like he's going to find the meaning of his life there, sucking red blooms on her skin; one hand cupped between her legs and the other arm wrapped around her chest, keeping them close. Her wet hair drips down her back and his chest, water mixing with their sweat.

She tightens around him and he feels it in his whole body.

 _'Oh my god…'_

She turns her head, presses her panting mouth to his cheek. He feels the wet touch of her tongue just a second before she starts shaking in his arms, throwing her head back against his shoulder with low moan. The sound of it so close it makes shivers crawl down his spine and straight to his dick and that's it. That's it. He closes his eyes, his vision whiting out behind his lids, and hides the sound of his soul leaving his body in her neck.

They fall on their sides, panting, and Oliver keeps his hips pressed tight against the curve of her ass, not wanting to lose any of it yet. Not just yet.

That's what they do, for hours. Until they are both raw, every sensation a slice to a deeper nerve, blurring the line between pleasure and pain. At some point they doze no matter how hard Oliver fights against it, convinced he would wake up alone and not wanting to waste it. But he does close his eyes and the next thing he knows he wakes up with her mouth around him. That's how dreams and reality start blurring.

Felicity sobs when she's close, biting her bottom lip till it bleeds. She pushes his hand away from between her legs, shaking, chest heaving. And then reaches for him again almost immediately after with a whimper that might as well be a rope around him, pulling him in. He's barely caught his breath, so he shoulders her thighs apart and eats her out instead.

He takes it slow, knows she's too sensitive for anything else to feel good, but she presses against him, pulls at his hair, insistent, uncaring. He doesn't know quite how to touch her at this point so he lets her tell him. He curls a finger inside her when she presses her heel insistently on his back, sucks at her clit. He knows that's practically a cheat-code, and there it is: she bows off the bed, thighs shaking. The sounds leaving her mouth are loud, abandoned. They echo around the room and slam back into him. So does the way she writhes beneath him, her hands everywhere she can reach to keep him where he is.

She comes with a shout that scythes its way out straight from her soul, her thighs pressing hard against his ears even as she twists away from him.

Oliver catches his breath with his face pressed against the gentle curve of her belly. He feels shaky, frail as if he's all water wrapped in skin. Her hands are on his nape, fingers combing through his short hair. He could sleep like this. He could, but then this would be over. So he pushes up on shaky arms and kisses his way up her body. Five day old stubble bristles against her flushed nipple and she hisses. He slips his thigh between hers and one arm under her back. Cups the back of her neck as he kisses her like his life depends on it. Felicity arches her body into his like a wave, opens her mouth for him without a second thought.

He lays half on top of her and half on the bed and kisses her for long moments. She sighs in his mouth, quiet and small, fingers pressing gently against his cheeks, tracing the lines of his face with her eyes closed. It's such an absent gesture of tenderness that it floods his whole body with warmth. It makes him shudder in her arms, utterly helpless against all he feels and the ways he could break for her.

He brushes the tip of his nose against hers, the softest touch she taught him that always meant 'I love you', lips lingering against hers as he brushes her hair off her sweaty forehead.

There is nowhere else he would want to be. Nowhere.

Felicity opens her eyes. They're glazed over, high on him, on them _together_. She still wears an orgasm better than anything else he's seen her in, and it makes him want to get down on his knees and give his thanks in the best way he knows how.

She blinks, keeps looking at him and for the first time in hours, between the two of them there's something close to calm.

But it doesn't last long.

Awareness comes back to her through the haze of the endorphins she's swimming in. They're pressed so close together that he can feel the wet heat of her high against his thigh. And yet, even without moving an inch, it takes a blink for distance to come between them. He can pinpoint the exact moment when it happens.

He'd thought – it had _felt_ – like they had been running from something. Like maybe they had landed somewhere far away from the uncertainty that pushed them into each other's arms in the first place. But they haven't. They're right where they started and Oliver knows that when her eyes well up and finally, the tears fall.

Love for her, the depth of how much he cares, the countless little strings that tie her joy and pain to his, are wrenched alive. The feeling floods his chest cavity, making it feel too small to contain it all. He traces the line of her tear with his thumb, fingertips brushing against the side of her face, needing to give _some_ kind of comfort… but she flinches.

"Don't."

Oliver stills, surprised and hurt.

( _If before was the moment she'd floated back into her body, this is the moment when Oliver slips out of his_.)

He can find all the places where he sucked blooms on her skin in the dark. Knows exactly where on the inside of her thighs his bristly cheeks left patches of red and where he held on too tight. And through all that, she just pushed back harder, held him tighter. But _now_ she flinches? After hours of the only words out of her lips being 'yes' and 'please' and 'harder', hours of not denying them anything… _this_ is what she wants to refuse?

He'd known something like this would happen. Of course he'd known. This had been his fear, before. The measure of dread at how hard he would have to hit the ground after that jump. He'd known there would be no safety net waiting for him. He'd _known_.

Doesn't make the landing any sweeter.

There's none of the forcefulness with which she held onto him earlier in the way she presses her palm flat against his chest, right over his heart. Oliver goes regardless.

Felicity squirms away, rolling out of bed on unsteady legs. He watches her dress with shaky hands, without looking at him. She makes for the door and Oliver thinks, ' _this is it. This is it._ ' This too is a kind of death and like before, he is forced to keep living.

But then she stops, balls her hands into fists, a tremor running along her shoulders. She turns unexpectedly, walks to him and sits on the foot of the bed, as far away from his as possible without falling off the mattress.

Her eyes are wide and fixed on his, a world of hurt swimming in them, but there's determination too.

"I'm sorry."

He already knows that. Guilt pinches the corner of her eyes, threads in her voice.

He swore some months ago, that he would never again be the reason she hurt this much. He hadn't believed himself capable of hurting her again, but apparently there are some promises he just cannot seem to keep.

"There's nothing to apologize for, Felicity." And he means it. "I knew this wouldn't change anything."

He doubts she buys that. Just like she can't hide her regret from him, he can't hide his own heartbreak from her. They've scraped each other raw: everything is too close to the surface to hide now.

She shakes her head and her tears shake loose. "I'm _sorry_."

"It's alright."

"It's _not_." There is anger simmering there, but it's not directed at him. She looks at her own hands when she says it. "It's so… God!"

Her head falls in her hands and Oliver moves, slides down the bed to be closer to her. Close enough to take her hand.

"I didn't mean to make it so ugly."

" _Nothing_ about us being together is ugly." He's firm in that. As sure as the foundations of the earth. As sure as he is about her. But then he softens his voice because he wants to be nothing but gentle to her. "Nothing about anything you need can be ugly."

Her shoulders curl up as if she's protecting herself from a cold draft. He doesn't understand, and honestly, it hurts that she's so ashamed of this.

When she looks up, there's a new glint in her eyes. She straightens, her jaw is set.

"I won't… It _won't_ happen again."

He knows she means to reassure him. It's not her fault they seem to be in complete dissonance in that moment.

"It won't?"

Felicity grimaces, but doesn't back down. She looks around, squinting and he knows she's trying to remember when she dropped her glasses.

"Conference table."

"Right." She huffs, smoothes a hand down her skirt and Oliver knows she's thinking back to when he yanked it up, right there on that table where they forgot her glasses.

She doesn't answer him and he thinks she won't, because this non-conversation too is an old one. He won't press, but he won't give up either, because there are some lessons he knows, but that he refused to actually _learn_. Things like hope being dangerous, for instance. That there are lost places where hoping is the fastest way to die. Places where it will drive you insane, give you the deepest wounds, the ugliest scars.

He's been living off hope for months though.

"Oh my god, just when I thought there was no sinking any lower," she murmurs, and then turns sharp eyes to him. "I will not _use_ you to make myself feel better. I'm not going to be that person. There is a lot that is wrong with me, but I _refuse_ to add that to the list."

"I know what being used feels like, Felicity. Believe me, this is not it."

She purses her lips, smoothes her palms down the wrinkled skirt of her dress the way she does when they're sweating.

"What happened was a mista-"

He knows what she's gonna say. "A mistake?"

"Yes, it was," she insists. "I knew you wouldn't say no and I… It was selfish and inconsiderate and…"

"It wasn't," and then, more softly, "But even if it were, I can forgive you for it."

It seems such a small thing, really. Even though more and more he's starting to think he would forgive her for anything. She would never be at the top of the list of people who've hurt him, but the thing is, he never wanted her on that list at all.

Felicity recoils as if his words hurt, hands curling up tight against her stomach.

She doesn't look at him. This time when she gets up her feet are much steadier.

"I'm gonna go now."

He can't tell if she's hurt or angry, or if it was something he said to make her so. He doesn't know. He watches her leave and goes back through the conversation, replaying it over and over, searching.

It will be in the early hours of the morning that he will remember – how it felt to be loved and know he's undeserving. To be forgiven and feel the blood on his hands weighing more than an anvil. Out of all the things they have ever had in common, he'd never wanted _this_ one to be one of them: she doesn't want to be forgiven.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: hell is empty (all the devils are here)

 _"i've spent the last half year digging_  
 _through flesh, nails caked with marrow_  
 _bruised knuckles squeezing_  
 _through too-tight ribs_

 _whispers grow louder with panic,_  
 _prayers ascend, it has to be here_  
somewhere—but there is  
 _no exit wound"_

 _- exit wound, by saltwaterskies_

She can't sleep anymore. Not won't – _can't_.

The tension perched on her shoulder has fangs for days and they're in her deep. She looks at her bed like it's the enemy, that's true, but it's not the dread of what awaits her there that keeps her away, so much as everything else that just _amplifies_. Her brain jumps to 11 and she'll start pacing and coding and surfing the darknet and she doesn't know anymore if it's a distraction she wants or just something to do.

She never really acknowledges why out loud, but it's there, hidden from sight, growing in the back of her head like mould. If she doesn't go to sleep, tomorrow won't get there as fast and she will be allowed to just _be_ for a little while longer.

She insists on moving forward, needing to keep moving for fear of everything she's running from catching up to her and swallowing her completely. She shoves her feelings down a hole deep inside her heart and hopes to keep them quiet there. But once opened, that door cannot be closed. And she doesn't notice, but other things keep falling down that hole too, obliviously, without making a single sound.

Her favorite pair of earrings, the pretty pink nail polish she bought last summer, the blue-beaded necklace her grandmother gave her. The last time she smiled, her favorite dress, the last walk in the sun. Her mother's tear stained face, her father's betrayal. They make no ripples in her anymore. Laurel's curled up nose when she smiled so hard her face lit up; she pretends not to miss it until one day it's gone. Just like that. The feel of being wrapped in gentleness on the couch in a sunwashed living-room; it disappears. The second beating heart inside her planted there by all those who taught her what it feels to be loved - that goes too.

Sometimes she feels like nothing has remained, a whole lot of it: nothing, nothing. Weakness, self-destruction, and the tip of a flame of hell piercing the floor [1] .

It's okay though. It's okay.

Something has to give, right? Something _has_ to! Most of the time she thinks this kind of slow disappearing is the only way she can ever bear to go on living.

 _I believe in justice. I do._

She's so tired though. Exhausted. In the deep silence of the night her heart hurts so loudly the walls keep shaking with it. But then a thick fog rises from the starvation planted in her belly and stretches like a blanket over her, numbing everything again.

You'd think laying under seven thousand layers in one's own body would make it easier to sleep.

It doesn't though, and even if her brain stops screaming at her enough for her to go to bed instead of just passing out on it, _anger_ comes for a visit.

Felicity tries not to cater to it no matter how seductive it feels. She knows this kind of feeling: it's not a guest. You don't invite it over. You don't set the table for it or it will never fucking leave.

But this _thing_ she's living with – there's no running away from it!

 _She_ is _this_. The grief, the anger and the guilt, the weight of her shame - it has all condensed into some dark living _thing_ just an inch under her skin, as much part of her as it's separate from her.

She'd been so afraid to feel any of it, at first. Afraid it would swallow her whole. She'd pushed it away and ran from it as hard as she could and when she managed to catch her breath, the emptiness she'd been left with had been just as terrifying. She'd tried then - tried to dig into herself, open up her chest and push around her insides, needing to shake loose from this darkness some of the feelings it had swallowed ( _so ashamed that she hadn't cried, she hadn't grieved, that she_ could _not_ ), needing to live it and then put it behind her.

And she'd felt _nothing_.

Even her own body denied her - she'd betrayed it so many times for it to trust her her. She looked at the pieces of herself: a best friend six feet under, left behind by a brother, her mother, no lover, no friends, no family, a murderer of thousands - and nothing to show for it. Running from her grief wasn't necessary anymore. It was gone now, leaving only the void behind.

No self, no pain, no grief. Just ugliness that hides within rooms inside her she didn't even know she had, translating to violence. A violence she cannot let out and that makes her feel as if somewhere along the way she swallowed a sword. It cuts her from the inside because it has to cut _something_. Makes her glare shapes into the walls and want to raise her own fists against herself, because they are exasperated at being still and they _know_ they have to be used on _someone_.

She wakes up black and blue from within, more tired than she was when she went to sleep, crawls out of her bed and then does it all over again.

o

She keeps going to the bunker even when she doesn't quite remember why, or how much good it may do her. It's the one thing she can do, so she does it. Works with Curtis, builds gadgets with him, runs searches, keeps living as Overwatch.

She has a lot to make up for.

( _There are times when she freezes. Times when she wishes she were anywhere else and she has to take a step back. Times when numbers of the square root of Phi, lining up one after the other in her head, are the line that saves her from falling into some black hole._ )

She can feel his eyes on the back of her head every time – their silence echoes with his questions and is so strained that the very air feels thicker.

Mostly she avoids him. In the new world they inhabit, that happens. It should feel stranger, but these days so little feels like anything.

They used to glace each other and have whole conversations. He used to know her language and she would understand his silences and their togetherness used to feel like belonging, but that can't help her now. Now there's only a tiresome existence in this nameless in-between she populates.

She hates her loneliness and loves it and longs to leave and longs to stay, so she does not truly leave and does not truly stay and has become less than a body [2] .

o

In the end though, she will always make the same mistake.

o

It is an accident, but it really isn't.

It is exhaustion. And impulse. It is wave after wave of thoughts crashing down on her, and the isolation of it all pressing against her body so hard she is almost shoved out of it.

It is irrational fear… _need_.

The aloneness that she has been so comfortable with, that she has cultivated like some fucking poisonous garden – it has its trap doors too and they've sprung open on her all at once. She has found herself all alone in a room full of mirrors, with her heart beating up her throat for company.

But he's been there. With one ear pressed against the walls of her, like she's something sacred.

It burns when he touches her.

And it is the most real thing she's felt in so long. The body crying against its hands is left behind and everything inside her has collapsed to its knees. She could howl for mercy at the feel of it, if she had the breath.

He kisses her and the words press themselves to her skin like a brand, reminding her.

 _Murderess, murderess. Selfish. Taker, leaver, liar. Killer…_

He would _never_ say any of that to her, ever.

And that hurts worse.

Even silent, the way he loves hurts. Hurts and saves her soul at the same time.

He gives. She takes. Nothing could make anything worse than what it already is.

Fuck it.

o

She is wrong about that too, of course.

Of course.

o

She moves as if through a dream. Tries to open the door of her car but it feels like putting thread through a needle's eye. She takes a deep breath and tries again.

She should call a cab. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knows that. She should drive slower, pay more attention to the road.

She should do a lot of things she doesn't do.

She tries not to think, repeats lines of code in her head; the alphabet backwards, the names of all the capitals of Europe in alphabetical order, all the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. All the names of the streets down from the house she grew up in, in Vegas. She remembers as far as thirty blocks worth of them, before it takes too long to remember the next.

It doesn't make her body ache less.

She smells like him – like _them_. It's a cloud around her. He's present all the way down to her lungs. She's still wet between her legs.

She can't stand the feel of her own skin, it makes her nauseous.

 _Why do you do this to yourself?_

There is no reason why. There's only 'why not?' and no answer.

She keeps going through mental hoops to engage her concentration so that she doesn't have to think about how, for the first time in so long, she has a body that feels like a body, and not just an empty cathedral where every sound echoes for days-

 _Not like this, though. Not like this…_

-and she can't _stand_ it. She can't breathe through it. Her soul eats her feelings.

How his face had collapsed with anguish just a moment ago-

 _You did that. It was you this time and you_ liked _it. Every bit of it._

Shame crawls up her neck on millipede legs. It makes her feel small enough to fall through the cracks of the pavement on her apartment building's lobby.

She's naming the artists of the Italian Renaissance when she opens the door of her house with shaky hands and slams it shut. She doesn't turn on any of the lights, doesn't want to see what stares back at her from any mirrors tonight. She'll be a walking ache tomorrow, but tomorrow isn't here yet.

She peels the orange dress off as fast as she can and throws it in the hamper.

She should go to her room and sit on her bed the way she is, with him all over her, for days, for as long as she can stand it without dying. That would be fitting.

Instead she heads straight for the shower.

The cold water hits her in a blast and she shivers, but doesn't wait for it to get warmer. It washes away her sweat, his sweat, the stickiness between her thighs. It stings. She moves a bit so more of it can wash down her body. She hisses, grabs her body wash and pours generously, scrubbing down her body and pressing harder in on every patch that feels sore, just 'cause she can. The water and the fruity scent of her shampoo finally overwhelm the scent of him. She's tempted to scrub her tongue with some of it too, but instead opens her mouth under the downpour of the shower and pretends to drown some.

The feel of him remains. Nothing she can do about that.

Nor should she. Washing him away is cowardice, as it was cowardice to fall into him. She _deserves_ a reminder of this. To feel the mark of it on her face, her lips, hands, between her legs where she'll feel him for days, and everywhere else too. This is the kind of pain that has an allure, a scent almost. Hothouse gardenias. Lurid, but almost furtive [4] .

It's what she'd wanted, isn't it? _Something_ – be it pleasure or pain or both - to drown out the echoes of the gaping hole inside her? Without caring how she got it.

Without caring.

She let him press his mouth to her throat like a brand and she carries the shame of that too now.

She'd known it was a mistake. She had known it, she just hadn't cared. And yeah, it felt better for a while. It had _felt_ , for a while, with her head blessedly quiet.

And then, when she got into the shower in the bunker, she had wanted to disappear. Just sit there under the beating of the cold water and vanish; every one of her cells evaporating, nothing of her remaining ever to be found [5] . The Fibonacci sequence she'd started adding up in her head had felt like a last thread of sanity.

She had wanted to leave - made up her mind right there in the shower, when shame for doing this to them - for not stopping it, shame for _enjoying_ it - had made it hard to breathe.

But then she saw him sitting there on the edge of the bed and everything had turned so big and she'd felt so small. How did she get so small? And he was _right there_! Looking at her like he wanted nothing more than to grab her and pull her out of the water. All that she had lost, all that she had done, came at her then. The curtain pulled, the true ugliness of it all stared her in the face and Felicity blinked first. The perverse need to disappear into thoughtlessness had become overwhelming.

So she'd made the same mistake again.

It was in her blood wasn't it? Failing at love to keep the family tradition going [6] sounded like something she could believe in.

She'd let the towel drop thinking 'what does it matter, anyway?'. She'd already fucked this up, why leave it halfway? She was Felicity fucking Smoak after all, right? She never did anything halfway; her mistakes were no different.

Laughter chokes her now, and she can taste the ashes of 20,000 souls in the back of her throat. ( _She's been choking on them for weeks_.)

No, her mistakes are _no_ different! They leave _craters_.

On her life, on the world.

On what they used to be for each other.

They had never been about taking, about being selfish. Maybe… maybe sometimes it had happened, but they'd never left each other stranded in those places. That's not how they had loved, how they had wanted to be for each other. It's not… it _was_ not who they _were_!

They'd been each other's kindness, and gentleness. Not _this_ …

But there is no 'they' anymore. What's left of the world after the flood is unrecognizable,and so is she. There's only water where there used to be a home, only grief she can't get close enough to feel and the vague outline of a body, where there used to be a person.

And then there's Oliver, clutching at hands that don't remember how to be hands, trying to save her.

She could let him. Truly, this time. He would be so good to her, so kind. Gentle enough to crack stone. She knows it.

She looks at her own hands and tries to come up with a reason to let him. It takes her thirty more minutes to remember to get out of the water, her fingers pruning and still no answers.

o

She tells Curtis she's taking a few days and he takes over for her at the bunker easily. She's hardly irreplaceable.

She sleeps, eats what's there. Avoids: her mother, Quentin, Thea. Diggle doesn't call. That's not surprising.

Oliver calls though. She doesn't answer him either. She knows she probably should, but she doesn't have the energy to speak to him or even to care what happens after. It's a contradiction.

She'd rather have quiet, so she opens a bottle of wine.

The sun comes up, goes down and she spends her time lying on different surfaces, feeling guilty she's so useless and feeling too drained to be anything else. Sleeps some more, wakes up no less tired.

On day number four she takes a shower, gets dressed, gets out. Walks around a little.

He's waiting for her when she comes back.

Felicity freezes, looks at him without understanding, because… _why_?

Why is he here? Why would he _want_ to be here?

The second he sees her, he stands up, hands hanging by his sides like he has no idea what to do with them before he shoves them in his pockets. He's come straight from the mayor's office, she can tell. His button-down is rumpled, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He takes her in from head to toe and she knows that the stress tightening the corners of his lips and eyes is because of her.

"Hi."

It sounds like a question. Maybe it is, because they don't do this. There are very clear lines now between them. What happened can't change that.

"I just wanted to check on you." He explains fast, as if he can read her thoughts.

Right.

"I'm fine." The words are out before she can think better of them and Felicity tries her best not to flinch.

 _Damn it!_

"I'm pretending to be fine and it's getting less hard to pretend to be fine every day which means fine should be right around the corner."

She says it aggressively, as if it's his fault. It's not. Some things are, maybe, but not this.

"Okay."

Felicity's irritation deflates like a balloon emptying of air across the room and then flopping on the floor.

"Are you…" Are you what? Okay? It's too stupid a question to finish.

Oliver shakes his head. "I'm not, actually."

His openness shoves at her from five feet away and Felicity feels more helpless than ever, because she can't help him. She wants to. She's been trying so hard to do good, but it's like trying to read in a language she's forgotten.

She can't take back what she did. Not any of it.

And though Oliver will probably always be the first person she wants to help, right now she is the last person who could ever do him any good.

As she proved multiple times.

Felicity blinks fast to keep the tears at bay. "I already said I was sorry."

"No, that's not what I-" he takes a deep breath, passes a hand over his face, seeming so vulnerable that she can't bear to look straight at him. "That's not what I meant at all, Felicity."

Her shoulders fall, already too tired for this. "What are you doing here, Oliver?"

"I just…" he shifts on his feet, his thumb brushing insistently against the tips of his fingers. "I just needed to talk to you."

She wants to say no, doesn't want to talk to him, or be near him, or him near her. But then she thinks of how much he'd given just because she asked him to without having any right to ask anymore, and every ache in her body wakens all at once, reminding her what she did to him.

Felicity walks to her door, steps through it and holds it open.

o

It's the first time he's been to her new place.

It's smaller than the loft, white walls, open space. Empty kitchen if he doesn't count the boxes of takeout stacked on the counter. He can see the corner of her bed, its rumpled sheets, from the half open door at the end of the corridor to his left. He doesn't comment on how her stuff is still in boxes against the walls and that the only pieces of furniture are a coffee table – her closed laptop and tablet on it, a grey couch that he can't believe she picked, and a couple of blankets.

She sits on one end of the couch. He sits on the other. When she says nothing, just curls up and looks at him, he knows she's waiting for him to talk.

So he does.

Work, Diggle, Thea. The first time her lips curve up is when he mentions his play-date with little Sara so he goes on some more about that. City Hall is hard, the people are difficult, but he doesn't tell her much about that. He doesn't want to worry her - and then catches himself lying even in his head: he is ashamed of how hard the job is and how he feels he's going to fail at it. That's why.

He tells her that probably Thea knows more about being the mayor than he does. He knows she understands what he means, what he's hiding, but she doesn't say anything. He looks to his hands when he tells her the reason why he's really there. What Laurel told him in that hospital room and how he has no idea what to do about it.

The absent look in her eyes gives way to grief only for a moment.

"She was thinking about the future," he says, and he realizes how strange those words are, in this unlived apartment, between two people who only have a past and barely live the present.

Felicity's eyes shine with tears. "She didn't get a future, Oliver."

He stares at her face, determined. "No. But she did leave a legacy."

o

He talks about Laurel and Felicity feels like she's trying to breathe with an anvil planted on her chest. This is physics, she thinks. Boyle's law: there has been a decrease of whatever mass made up the insides of her, therefore pressure from the outside has increased with the same proportion.

She wonders if people break this way. Then she looks at Oliver and knows they don't.

She's not like him though. She's not.

"Felicity?"

She snaps her eyes to him. "What?"

He's looking at her like he can't quite figure something out. "You… you're breathing faster."

That breath she was taking gets stuck on its way in.

She has no idea why an observation so unlikely would unravel her fast enough that she can't get a hold of the thread. ( _She_ does _know though. She does and she's never loved and hated him more than she does right in this moment, for knowing what's under her skin down to her last part. Well enough to know what her breathing is and isn't._ )

His alarm is as clear on his face as it is in his voice and she's furiously trying to blink tears away.

"Felicity! Please."

She shakes her head.

Oliver isn't one to take no for an answer in the face of her pain, though, she should have known. She _does_ know, but she can't help it. He touches her face and she lets him. She leans in and his breath fans over her face. His hand on her cheek, fingers so long they stretch all the way to the back of her neck, stops her gently.

Felicity's cheeks burn with the humiliation of rejection.

"You know I'd do anything for you." He whispers, so close she goes a little cross eyed looking at him. "But this is not helping you, Felicity."

"Nothing helps me."

He takes one of her hands, links his fingers through hers and presses the back of her palm against his chest, eyes impossibly blue and impossibly sad.

"What's wrong? Just tell me."

Felicity feels her lip shaking, so she bites down on it. Shakes her head.

She can't stand it. Can't stand him.

She gets up knowing he will follow. He does, steps in front of her and frames her face with his hands, holds her close enough that she has to crane her neck to look at him.

He looks as heartbroken as she wishes she felt.

' _I won't use you_ ' she'd told him. Promised him.

She'd lied.

"Felicity…"

He keeps asking, but nothing inside her stirs.

 _I've forgotten how, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't know anything_.

He's the one who kisses her this time. He kisses her like he wants to save her and she lets him because not doing it would take more of a fight than she has left in her.

o

"It's okay." he tells her, and he means it. "It's okay that you don't know. Because I love you."

She doesn't seem to hear it, but he holds her tighter. Because he _does_ love her.

 _'And I'm not fooled by the mistakes you've made, or the darkness of the thoughts you have about yourself. I'm not. I_ know _you.'_

He would have said it aloud, but she doesn't look like she would stand to hear it, so he tries his hardest to show her. Because he sees only beauty when she feels ugly and will always touch her like she is the best thing his hands have ever held.

 _'I love you and I remember your wholeness when you feel broken, your innocence when you feel guilty_ _[7]_ _. I remember everything about you. I'll be the keeper of your purpose too, if you're lost_.'

It's all she did for him when he could hardly stand to be touched with gentleness after years of flinching from violence.

 _'I know how to love you, Felicity.'_

o

She'd never imagined the end of the world, but she does now. She lives it. The world ended and she walks the aftermath of it.

The world, her _self_.

Gone, gone, gone now.

Ashes float in the air like thick snow, clog her throat. Everything's a ruin. Car tires melted into the asphalt, rows and rows of them like metal rivers, lifeless. A landscape of abandoned cities, decaying metal and blasted concrete. Buildings that were once homes are empty, crumbled and folded into themselves in ruin, in grief.

Starvation populates this world of hers.

The apocalypse is here... and she still wants to fuck him.

Wanting is strange these days. It's wonky. No surprise there – her compass is broken. So are her reasons. She wants many things and she wants nothing at all. She wants to go back and make a different choice. _That_ is what she wants. That wanting is sometimes all she is, a concentration of self to the point of a needle, as heavy as the heart of a black hole. The questions that haunt her are there in her sleep and in her waking hours and in this world too: the shattered glass beneath her feet.

 _Why didn't you send the bomb to water? Why didn't you send it somewhere else? Why didn't you put in different coordinates?_

 _Why weren't you faster, smarter, better? Why couldn't you save them_?

 _Why did you kill them?_

But she can't go back. She can't fix it and she can't get rid of wanting to, so this wanting rots inside her and eats her heart, until she can't want or care about anything else.

The only time she feels anything is when he's inside her. And after, when she sinks into shame like a pool of ice water.

It's surprising, but not really. She doesn't handle guilt well, and now she doesn't want to handle anything. And things between them, they're over, but he still looks at her the way he used to. Like she matters, like there's something else in her besides buildings full of things she wants to raze to the ground.

It makes her sick and it makes her angry, but he doesn't care so she doesn't either. The locust and wild vines cover everything, and she goes to him and lets him fuck the anger right out of her, then leaves.

This kind of living, slurring, gnarled and damaged, through a destruction with no end, has evil floating inside it like dark ink through deep water. She chases down her hurts; finds her place among the ugliness and calls it belonging. It's not just inside her, but at her very fingertips. She leaves the mark of her cruelty on everything she touches: he says 'I love you' in her neck and she pretends not to not hear it.

She goes to the ceremony held in remembrance of the Havenrock victims, and in her wretched world the last broadcast announces in her head that there is no hope. The world is done for. This is the apocalypse.

Flames lick at her feet, so she puts on a red dress and takes off her panties and goes to find him. There are no words this time. He knows, doesn't even hesitate.

They end up in a small closet, one hand gripping her ass, the other between their bodies as he fucks her against the wall. 'Harder' she tells him. 'Yes. _Yes_! Make me feel it' _Anything, please_. But that she doesn't say aloud. She wraps her arms around his neck, fingers digging into him, trying to sweat her evil out. ( _It never works. It never leaves. Instead it blooms, it eats, it grins._ ) He licks her body new again, his hands waking shivers out of her, the feel of him hot enough to melt pavements. Time and time again, he is what makes the sidewalks of her world blister.

She goes to him and puts her teeth on his pulse, over and over again. He lets her, gives her what she wants. On every pavement of the crumbling city she lives in, against every decrepit building, on every corner that isn't on fire. The world is shaking apart but she calls it foreplay. She doesn't let up, doesn't stop, pulls him in, holds him tight enough to make the air around them jealous. She lets him fuck her standing as she holds onto the back of his neck. In the storage room of his office, in the server room of the bunker.

Never the bed again.

She doesn't remember the last time she said ' _I love you_ '. The last time he said it back or the last kiss they shared that didn't make her feel less than human.

Pretending not to feel the flames when everything is on fire is not the best choice she's ever made, but - she scoffs - it's not the worst one either.

She sucks the ashes of the destruction off his fingers, tastes them on her tongue. It's terrible enough to fit in her now. She lets guilt make a home out of her body. It belongs to her more than her name.

She falls to her knees in front of him, makes him lose himself, focuses on that. Lets him pull her onto his lap. They try to crawl into each other on her ugly couch, the boxes in which she's packed her life bearing witness.

May the fires of the world burning not be the only thing to makes her sweat.

She doesn't really care how much it all looks like madness. There's no putting reason back into her decaying cities - her mind - again. There's simply no room left for it now.

* * *

[1] Franz Kafka, from a diary entry featured in Diaries

[2] Mourid Barghouti, from I Was Born There, I Was Born Here

[4] Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

[5] Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend

[6] Warsan Shire

[7] Alan Cohen

Notes:

like many things about this fic, there are parts of it that are very closely related to genestee's fic of the same theme. this part:  
"Why didn't you send the bomb to water? Why didn't you send it somewhere else? Why didn't you put different coordinates? Why weren't you faster, smarter, better? Why couldn't you save them? Why did you kill them? (How are you still breathing?)" - especially so, because it was simply so beautifully done the way she wrote it, and I couldn't fathom another way to say it.

here is me saying again that if you haven't read her fic (you probably have, but lets be sure), read it, because it's outstanding and you won't regret it.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: how ruthless are the gentle

 _Notes_ :

TRIGGER WARNING ADDED: suicidal thoughts in this chapter, guys. it's not overly explicit, but it is clearly impled. please be careful

HUGE shout out to peacefulboo, who'se hard editing ad beta reading work you will enjoy because lol, without her, this chapter would be such a mess. and she deffinitely did some life saving there with one particular scene so yeah. Also a huge thank you to my most bestest friend, flavinja - who basically held my hand as i wrote this and listeed to me talk about it endlessly until i wrote my way ou of various holes, because she is the purest soul alive to bear my mental constpations with such grace.  
anyway, thank you both.

* * *

 _What I would later call living  
_ _Was nothing special  
_ _Now I've grown up  
_ _Into a full- fledged liar  
_ _And loneliness says  
_ _Let us go through this  
_ _Again together  
_ _You and I_ [1]

The most irritating thing about life is that, even after the sky cracks open right over your head, it inexorably goes on. Uncaring, indifferent, the world keeps turning, not giving a fuck about what broke and that you don't have the first idea how to fix it.

And whether you want to or not, you go with it. Usually.

There are ways to stop though. Things you can do. All manner of digging in one's heels. It's rarely conscious, this stalling - at least not for Felicity.

Everything and everyone around her continues, a blur of necessities and bullshit. Thea has a job she loves, Curtis too, Oliver's hours at City Hall get busy enough that even he has trouble getting away; her mother is with Lance, Lyla is on call with ARGUS at all hours. Everyone is going places, and Felicity - she's stopped. Planted her feet in the middle of the riverbank so hard she grew dark roots deep into the earth. And life flows her by, river water molding around the shape of her. A body out of a body out of time out of feeling[2].

o

Ever since she came back to Starling, her mother invites Felicity over for dinner with her and Quentin at least once a week. Sometimes Felicity goes, sometimes she doesn't. It depends on how much and for how long she can pretend to be okay that day. She has to go every once in awhile; saying no would spawn questions Felicity doesn't feel like answering. She's extra careful to look alive around them both though, because her mother knows her and Quentin just _knows_. The way he looks at her sometimes - she always has to look away because it feels like he's looking straight past her thick skull and exactly into what she doesn't want anyone to see.

She meets Malone when he comes to call on Lance during one of these dinners.

He's attractive in a soft way: sweet smile, gentle eyes. They shake hands, his grip is firm enough to tell her he takes her seriously. Lance calls him a good cop. There are few enough of those around these days for it to make an impression, somewhat.

She forgets about him the moment he's out of sight.

o

Every time he opens his arms to accept her despite how carelessly she walked away the time before, she finds herself angrier with him. He keeps pretending this is going somewhere but this is not the kind of hurting that means you're going places. This is just hurting. It has no meaning, it's just violent.

And he's just pretending.

He must know this can't go on forever. That this can only exists in the silent, ruined world she inhabits and in which she keeps dragging him into.

One of these days he's going to wake up to the truth of what she's doing. The ways she is using him, as if he were a knife she uses to separate flesh from bone. One day it will happen. It _has_ to. ( _None of it feels real, nor will it, until he grabs her head between his hands hard enough to bend her skull and yells in her face 'who are you?'_ )

He's going to be so _angry_.

But other times, she finds herself thinking she should know better. She remembers that this is _Oliver Queen_ ; Felicity Smoak is not going to be his breaking point. (R _emembers that this_ is _Oliver Queen, and that she was not built to love someone who will do anything to survive_.)

She should be kinder. Some kind of softer. But she has no idea how to be[3]. She's become small enough to fit into anyone's pocket, there is no kindness to be found anywhere near her.

He looks at her the way he's always looked at her and she wants to slap him. _'Wake up!_ ' But she doesn't. ( _She looks at herself in the mirror sometimes and wants to break it, but she doesn't. She won't allow herself something as forgiving as denial._ ) She kisses him instead, presses her mouth at the thumping pulse in his throat, breathes his name. She touches him with those hands - _those_ _fucking hands!_ \- and he _lets_ her. He gets between the legs of a natural disaster, takes her mouth with his and she wonders 'why?' and 'how' and 'am I the riot you like to watch up close, now?' and takes and takes and takes.

It's punishment, plain and simple, but she has no idea who is being punished anymore. Doesn't care, anymore. All the gods might as well be dead.

o

She goes through her days thinking she is keeping herself together and as she does, she watches her mother and Lance fall apart.

He is a walking, talking bruise of a human being these days. Whatever anesthetized version of failure she is living – _he_ is the shameless opposite of it.

She has no idea why he came back to this crater of a city. Maybe because his daughter loved it so much.

It doesn't really matter.

Quentin falls off the wagon – inevitable – and Felicity is angry enough that she can't seem to spare any genuine sympathy for any of it; not for him or her mother or anyone. But then one night he ends up at her apartment instead of his own and calls her Laurel and it makes her want to fall to her knees.

Felicity makes him coffee, shows him the shower with the kind of resigned acceptance of someone who knows what 'sorry' is but can't feel it.

When she remembers to pay attention to the flesh and blood of it all, her heart cringes for him. It's more than it's willing to do for her.

The secret is that she envies him for being able to grieve at all. Yes, she's mean enough now to resent him for it too. The way she resents Thea for being able to get out and live her own life so well, so beautifully and not needing any part of the seediness of the underground that Felicity feels like she lives and breathes for. The way she resents John for gathering his pain and hauling it all the way to the other side of the world, when they most need each other.

She texts her mother, tells her not to worry, that Quentin is with her and that she would bring him home later. Later when he won't smell like a distillery.

It's fine.

They try to work through it, Quentin and her mom. Felicity can see it in their faces, in their bodies when she does meet them. But she knows the kind of pain Quentin is in and she knows her mother – better than she knows herself at this point: he won't stop, and she won't stay. No matter how much she wants to or tries. The brighter her mother smile gets, the more brittle it seems, corners of her eyes pinched as if the words she doesn't say burrow there. It tugs at the strings of her memory ( _every time she flinches from a mirror_ )

They want to be something more, something wider than the simple lines of the truth that define them, but that's impossible. Nobody can escape their own skin and neither can they. The sum of all the actions that led them to this point will also end them.

She used to be like them too, before. She used to be arrogant enough to think she could write her own story, make her own decisions. She never really understood what it meant to be lost. Never quite comprehended that inertia is the reason for so many of our actions. The choices most people think they make were planted in them long ago; by life, a careless hand, the back of someone's head. The only way to deviate from this sick version of destiny is to understand where it comes from; when something is right and when it's wrong and try to avoid the wrong choice. Make enough mistakes, and you lose the ability to do even that.

In the end, it's not about character; it's about accumulated weight and momentum.

Physics always wins.

o

 _But love is impossible and it goes on  
despite the impossible[4]_

It's July and they have become something Oliver recognizes but that he never thought possible.

One night she walks into his apartment and crawls up his bed, shoes and jeans and all, without even dropping her purse and falls asleep right on top of him, her breaths shuddering every now and then from all the crying she'd done before she comes to him. ( _He doesn't get her tears, only what they leave behind_ ). He feels her leave in the morning. Feels her shudder awake and then freeze when she realizes she is plastered to his side, fingers curled tight around a fistful of his T-shirt even in her sleep. She's careful to move slowly, as quiet as a shadow, trying not to wake him.

She should know better.

He lets her keep her illusion anyway.

( _He lets her keep so many things these days. She looks so bereft every time she thinks nobody's looking that he can't help but want her to keep all of what he can give_ )

She doesn't linger, ever. She doesn't want gentle, or sweet. It's not love. It's _not_ _love_. It doesn't give either of them peace.

Sometimes she walks into a room and she looks menacing, manic, like there are a thousand bees living under her skin. Like she wants to hurt someone. Every time she lets him get anywhere close to her, it's as if she's trying her hardest to drive him away. She kisses him hard, fucks him in ways that sometimes make it feel like she hates him, hates them, and it leaves him reeling and hollow. It would be easy to forget why he's even doing this to himself - there are only so many heartbreaks he can take - if he didn't see it clear as day how much she's hurting. How much she's changed because of it. She's like an open wound, walking around, always wet, never healing. He wants to crawl into her heart and kiss everything she thinks he'd hate, but she can't see it, can't feel it, and he can't make her.

He can't really help what it's doing to him either. The way he needs her has become an unbearable loneliness. The sum total of every goodbye he's ever given, coming back for him all at once.

He'd never really understood, before, how she could look at him after all he'd done, after all he'd told her, and still touch him like he deserved nothing but gentleness. He'd thought back then that for all her tender love - or because of it - she didn't understand. He's ashamed of that thought now. Because now he is where she used to be and her shoes are too big to fill. He can't make her feel loved the way she used to. She won't accept it.

She still kisses him the way she used to, sometimes. Just after she comes, before she pushes herself off him and rights her clothes, before she can do anything, when her mind is at its quietest.

She kisses him softly then.

o

After they refuse to see her for a month, advising her to get herself a lawyer, Felicity has a small talk with Walter about what she can and cannot do with the board of Palmer Tech. Then she sends them a clinically worded email from an untraceable source, the exact copy of which every major news outlet in the country would receive, on how Palmer Tech had the technology to revolutionize the field of medical care and they're holding out on account of maximized profits. Which was normal - except after all the company had been through they couldn't afford any kind of bad press, and both Felicity and the board know that. She would be breaking her confidentiality agreement doing so, but they'd need a magic wand at this point to be able to prove she's responsible for the leak.

They contacted her for a meeting the next day.

They don't want her back as CEO but she still owns the company, so wanted or not, she has some leverage. Felicity uses all of it to make sure Curtis' chip is manufactured. She doesn't push them on what they'll charge for the chip at first. One thing at a time - that's what Walter says.

But she _will_ see this done. This is her project, this will be the other side of her legacy. Something good she will give to the world, because if she can do it, then she _must_ do it – it's the same thing. It's not about paying thea toll anymore, it's not about scales or making it up to anyone. There is nobody left alive to forgive her or care and thinking like that had been wrong from the beginning.

She gets a win: some board members see it her way. Others are sympathetic. Dennis gets suspended and then Felicity pushes for him to be removed.

Fired.

She looks him in the eye when she delivers the news. Tries not to blink. It's not pettiness. It's business. He was in her way and now he's not anymore. Nothing to it.

Sometimes when she walks through the lobby or into some executive office, whispers die down, and Felicity is reminded of Isabel Rochev, cold behind panes of glass, and Moira Queen's knowing smile and perfectly coiffed hair. She's different, but she's also the same. Relentless like an iceberg.

She looks down to the extensive documentation of costs and revenue that would come in from the mass production of the miracle implanted in her spine and thinks, ' _there are more important things than passion or feeling_ '. If you have a goal and the will to see it done, you barely even feel their absence.

She picks up a pen and uncaps it, starts marking the important things with red lines and notes on the sides. A deal with the DOD would be ideal, she thinks. They pay for half and it gets done. She makes a note to talk to Curtis later and see if they can modify the chip so that it will be impossible to weaponize.

She's not about to make the same mistake again.

The first time he kills a man in action that summer, Felicity is on the coms and the sound of the neck vertebrae snapping comes through so clearly to her ear that she jerks back hard enough to shift the chair away from the commands. Every fine hair on her body stands. Her heart starts hammering, mouth flooding with a bitter taste of the adrenaline climbing up her veins as her fingers shake.

Oliver comes back to the bunker with an unreadable look on his face and the blood of three different men on his leathers. He slams the bow on the table, leans on it, hood still over his head and shoulders tense as if he's expecting her to say something.

"I know what you're thinking." He says, voice so low that she can barely hear him.

She doubts that he does. _She_ doesn't even know what she's thinking.

"We've been going about this all wrong."

Felicity gulps, tries to swallow her heart back down. "We have?"

"Yes."

"How?"

He just shakes his head and Felicity remembers that there used to be a time when it really took all his concentration and effort not to kill whoever threatened him. That Oliver keeps death as close to his chest as he can, like an old friend, and that it wasn't even that long ago when he would fight toward it as much as he did against it.

She remembers and sits there, silent, holding herself in contempt . ' _Everything fell apart in me. How are things with you?_ ' It's all it would have taken. That much – and she couldn't do even that.

 _Why didn't you? Why don't you now?_

"It's all I think about. I can't _stop_ thinking about it. I have lost entire days thinking about it."

Her hands sweat. She waits.

"If I was wrong all along. If it was my fault. Maybe if I'd shown less restraint she would still be alive. Was even worth it in the end. I killed him anyway. Laurel is still dead. What's the point?"

He turns to face her then and Felicity almost flinches at the lost look on his face. He waits, like she's supposed to have the answers.

"If you can't remember then maybe you should take a break. There are other ways you can help this city. You don't have to come down here every night."

 _You're supposed to be mayor_ , she wants to tell him. _Why are you even here anymore?_

That's another good question.

He grits his teeth, stubborn. "I know why I'm doing this."

"The 'how' is gonna change though?"

"Yes, it will."

He says it almost like a challenge. It might have been, once, but things have changed. It feels hypocritical to talk about death like she is above it. She never has been, but she's a different kind of killer now.

Oliver could lay down the bodies of all the criminals and cold-hearted bastards that he has dropped; they could stretch from his feet to the horizon, and yet, Felicity's pretty sure the ones she laid waste to – innocent and undeserving - would take her further. Who is she to judge?

"That's your call to make. It always has been." He made the decision the first time, for himself. He has the right to make it again. "If you can live with it, then so can I."

His thumb and forefinger rub together. "And when you can't?"

"I've never had trouble letting you know when I can and cannot do things. Especially not when it comes to this."

She feels queasy saying it. Is this another mistake?

Oliver huffs. "No, you haven't."

They are having two different conversations: the one they _are_ having and the one they cannot have. The second seems to bleed though everything they do and say these days, but he doesn't admit it and neither does she. The moment they talk about it, it will be over, they both know it.

What he really wants to know is if she's leaving. What she really wants to say is ' _where else would I go?_ ' Half of both gets lost in translation.

o

 _Now you want out? Think you'll wrestle me out of you with prescriptions?  
A good man's good love and some breathing exercises?  
You think I can't tame _that _? I always come home. Always._  
 _Ravenous. Loaded. You know better than anybody:_  
 _I'm bigger than God._ [5]

She meets Malone again on the steps of City Hall, on her way to a meeting with Thea. He waves at her and calls her by name and Felicity wonders for a fraction of a second how he knows her, before remembering him. It's his smile that she recognizes: it seems to come so easily on his face and reaches all the way to his eyes.

She smiles back.

He doesn't know her well enough to tell if it's real or not. That's a nice change. They shake hands again, as acquaintances do. His are as warm as the first time. They feel different but she doesn't linger on that.

They talk – she hardly even remembers about what, but conversation flows. He's funny, makes her smile a couple of times before she even realizes what she's doing.

He was flirting, she will realize later. The good kind of flirting: appropriate distance away, soft and unobtrusive. Flirting as an open invitation to come closer. It makes her remember that there is a life beyond this crawling she's been doing. That there is a whole world out there and she should remember how to be a part of it.

All the shoulds in her head make her say 'yes' when he drops hints of a coffee date later on. She doesn't even think about it, she just does it. If he notices her voice shaking, he doesn't let on.

o

She doesn't _think_ about it, that's another in a long line of mistakes.

About Oliver and the fact that they fucked just last night on the med table, with the cold metal chilling her ass. About what that means and what she's doing and how to stop doing it. About how she's so deep into whatever this is, that she cannot say no to the smallest thing that gives her any relief, and about what kind of person she is warping herself into.

She doesn't think about it.

o

She knows he knows the moment she lays eyes on him. It makes her remember what going to public school in Vegas was like. Everyone knows everything. Starling is kinda like that. She thinks back to the alert that popped on her phone some hours before that she didn't bother to check out and wonders if some part of her was lining all this up on purpose and she never realized it.

 _I believe in justice, don't I?_

He's cold and stone-faced throughout the whole evening. She skirts the wide ballroom talking to people pretending that his disappointed stare wasn't weighing on her shoulders like a ton of bricks she keeps hauling around. Oliver is having trouble playing the part of the charming interim mayor too. He's stiff-mannered and distracted, has trouble smiling and when he does smile it never reaches his eyes. He intimidates people when he should be drawing them in.

She knows he doesn't give a fuck.

She's still there, so she probably doesn't either.

The room starts feeling smaller and smaller with the two of them in it, and she's sure they've literally consumed all the oxygen in there.

She approaches him when he's at the bar. Doesn't really think about how it will look or what anyone will think. She stands close enough to be too close but without touching him, orders a glass of red. She looks so hard at the side of his face, willing him to turn and look at her - but he doesn't.

He looks at his drink instead.

Felicity glances down.

Scotch. Neat.

 _Oh…_

He drinks scotch when he's trying to hold himself together by the skin of his teeth, but needs everyone else to believe he's got it together. She should go. She shouldn't push him when he's so close to whatever edge he's considering falling into ( _she's the edge, she knows it_.) She should fucking go find her date, but instead she shifts on her feet, waits. Waits.

 _Look at me. Come on, Oliver. What's one more time?_

Holds her breath.

Oliver downs the rest of his drink in one gulp and leaves the bar without glancing at her once.

o

She doesn't see him the next day. He doesn't call or show up in the bunker. Things are quiet, they have been for a couple of weeks, but things were quiet before too and he always showed up anyway.

And it's strange in a way, how unsurprised and hopeless she feels at his missing. Both, at once. How this is exactly what she wanted and it's also a blindsiding loss. Both, at once.

( _This loss, again. How could she have been so fucking stupid?_ )

But then, she always knew that this would be where the story would end. Out of all the things she's been in her life, she's always worn 'alone' best, after all. It suits her.

And it feels real, finally. All that happened, all that she did to get here, it comes to her in vivid color. The weight of it tightens along the seams of her skin, pulling her together, giving her weight, substance.

Finally the life outside her head matches the landscape of what's inside: ruined, ugly and abandoned.

o

 _Tell me how to feel and I will feel it.  
Make me into a socket.  
I want to bleed electricity on the shadow of the world.  
I want to be zero._ [6]

When did the soul die?

She knows of _what_ , but has trouble pinpointing when.

It wasn't immediately. She just let it… slip through her fingers. Like it didn't matter. Somewhere between repeating 'I'm feeling fine' so that she didn't have to say 'I'm not feeling', or, even scarier, 'I'm not', something slipped and got lost and she never got it back.

But when, though? When?

At midnight in her dark apartment, the questions seems important, but the silence has no answers to give.

The inside of her eyelids feel like sandpaper and her hands hurt. It doesn't help that the only illumination in the room comes from the screens of her computers. She has five different programs open. Felicity Smoak's whole existence is in them. Her birth certificate, her state records, her security code. Her grades, her history, every last mention on the internet. Her whole life at the click of a button.

She had wiped out thousands the same way, what's one more going to cost her?

She's been building these programs all summer as if she'd sleepwalked through it. They work like a charm though, and all she has to do is insert the codes, her fingerprint and the right commands, and Felicity Smoak would be erased from existence. There would be no more of her. Nothing.

So when – this is _important_ – when did her soul die? And if she did die, whose life has she been living all this time? How did she become this person?

Her fingers hover over the keyboard, hesitant. Unsure. Every day she has kept herself moving because she had to. because it was habit, and then it became bad habit, and not she doesn't have that either. She's done. ( _He's done_.) If there is such a thing as rock bottom, she's finally found it. She'd thought she'd hit it before, but she hadn't. Rock bottom looks and tastes like alone. Like the last ghost haunting a left-behind body, because the soul _has_ died, yes. It's gone and she's been living in the skin of someone she hates.

God, it would be the easiest thing. A few swipes and keystrokes and every mention of her would be scrubbed clean. Every note of her erased. The same way she wants to bleach herself out all of the memories of everyone who ever knew her, everyone who so much as smiled at her.

Unfortunately for her irrationality, she's the only hackable human she knows.

There is a joke waiting to happen in there somewhere.

A joke…

Felicity slams the lid of the computer shut and resists the impulse to throw it across the room and smash it against a wall. She walks to the bathroom, rips the clothes off her back carelessly, almost pulls her hair out trying to let down the updo.

 _You coward._ _You want to disappear? You want to play god? Take a big eraser and wipe yourself out of everyone's life? Who the fuck do you think you are?!_

Why should she get that? Why should it be that way for her? Where would she plead the right to that? What has she done to deserve that quiet fading in the dark? She doesn't get to have the easy way out! She's not just _anyone_ anymore.

 _You don't get to disappear, asshole._

 _You get to live. This skin you built will keep you now. This is fitting. Your alone suits you. You're not done here. You're not over yet_.

She keeps the programs though. She will eventually need those. Not now, not when it's so easy. Not with it feeling like a relief. But soon, though. Soon.

o

She spends the night drinking wine and drying her hair in the cold winds out in the balcony, noting the distance from the pavement with a sick kind of masochistic fascination.

She doesn't have that many memories of her dad when she was little, mostly she remembers how it felt when he left. But she does remember him telling her that people who feared heights, only feared what they would do, not the distance from the ground.

Well, fuck him too.

o

The next morning, she wakes up and she doesn't want to get out of bed - so she does. She crawls to the shower because she doesn't want to. Blow dries her hair because she doesn't want to. Puts on her makeup because she doesn't want to. It's Saturday but she knows that if she doesn't get out of the house, she will be stuck doing nothing all day – so Palmer Tech it is.

She's quietly drinking coffee to the sound of the morning news, when the bell rings. Felicity freezes, heart in her throat, because she knows who she thinks will be behind it.

She's shaking when she looks through the little peep-hole but all she sees is blonde hair and red nose.

 _Oh god…_

When she opens the door and comes face to face with her mother's red rimmed eyes and packed bags, Felicity is saddened, but not surprised.

"Morning baby."

Her heart squeezes in her chest at her mother's tired tone, and she walks forward for a hug. To give one or get one, it doesn't matter.

"You don't look so surprised to see me."

Felicity winces. "I'm sorry."

Donna huffs a laugh that moves the tiny hair on the back of Felicity's neck.

"Nothing to be sorry for." Donna says and holds her daughter at arm's length. "We both know how this goes, don't we?"

Yes they do.

It feels kinda like fate, in a way. Both of them, like this, to the one place they've always come back to: each other.

Out of everything she's lived through in the past few months, this is the only thing that feels right.

o

 _The only thing I know is this: I am full of wounds and still standing on my feet. [7]_

Felicity drives Donna to Vegas herself. Figures she needs the break ( _figures she wants to run, so she might as well give in, just for a short time_ ). She sends a hasty text to Curtis explaining, ( _Oliver hasn't called in days. Has it been a week? Time has been getting so strange lately_ ) and another one to Thea, to cancel their dinner date. One she would have canceled anyway.

The whole trip is silent, but halfway there her mother's tears stop falling. By the time they're setting up in a hotel within the borders of Nevada, Donna has her makeup on and is fixing her hair, picking a new dress, calling her friends looking for a job.

Felicity watches her like she's looking at her for the first time and she realizes - _this_ is a family tradition too and she is just now remembering.

This is what she should have done, what she has done time and again. She watches her mother plan her new normal like it's going to save her life and Felicity remembers, this is where she learned it.

She'd never quite understood this truth so clearly before.

She should have handled her life – it falling to pieces - better. She _knows_ better. She knows how to roll with the punches, how to put one step in front of the other. But she forgot, somehow. Forgot _how_.

 _How? Where did it go? Who took it from you?_

It's when she starts realizing she's missing lots of stuff that used to make up Felicity Smoak and if she looks back, she doesn't remember quite so clearly who that girl even was. Has it really been four months? Where did summer go? The beginning of the year feels like it was a lifetime ago sometimes, and other times it feels the memories of it are made of concrete and the rest of her is air. Everything is so confusing.

It's been four months but maybe it's been longer. Maybe she'd been tipping on the edge of the greatest fall she's had yet, since that night she was riddled full of bullets.

Maybe.

Who knows at this point.

o

Felicity sits down by her mother's side and sets their coffees down on the plastic table. They're at a small coffee-shop near Lorenzi park, just by the waterline and her mother is perusing the rentals page of the local newspapers.

"Mom."

"Yes baby." Donna answers reflexively, without looking up from her reading, capping and uncapping the pen repetitively. It used to annoy her when she was a kid, but now it's just familiar.

"I bought you a house in January."

Her mother freezes, looks up slowly.

"What?"

Felicity takes a deep breath, tries again. "I bought you an apartment. It's not too far from here and not that big 'cause I know you don't like that. Two rooms, great bathroom. It has a tub too. And a balcony. It's in a really quiet neighborhood but not far from the strip. It's totally bare so you can decorate it however you like – I have an account with this firm and-"

"Felicity!" her mother snaps, halting her babble.

"Yes."

Donna sets her open palm in the middle of the table, eyes carefully securitizing her daughter's face. Felicity wipes her own hand down her skirt and then sets it on her mother's.

"You bought me an apartment?" She repeats as if she wants confirmation.

"Yes."

"Why baby?"

This is really the silliest question. "Because I could."

Donna's frown deepens. "That's not really an answer, hon."

"It is actually." Felicity insists. And then, more softly: "I wanted to do something nice for you."

Her mother's eyes fill up with tears just like that, and Felicity bites her lip.

She still remembers how they used to move around from place to place sometimes, when she was little and that her mother's – and her own - most persistent 'one day-s' used to be owning their own place.

And maybe it was because Donna had felt like she could barely give her daughter a stable roof over her head so that had become her biggest wish; or maybe because the safety of an apartment you owned sounded really good when that was something you could not afford. It didn't matter. Felicity had always known her mother sacrificed a lot to give them both the life they'd had, but she'd only lately realized how much Donna regretted what she had not been able to provide. Too late maybe. And perhaps that made her selfish, but at least she wasn't oblivious.

The day after her mom told her about that little incident of the space camp, Felicity had started looking for an apartment to wrap in big red bow.

She tries to explain all of what she was thinking – that she'd wanted to surprise her, but then she'd gotten shot and then Donna had practically moved to Star City and then everything else had happened and Felicity had kind of lost track of herself. Her mother's eyes when Felicity tells her that are serious and worried, but she doesn't say anything, for once. Felicity smiles brightly and starts talking about the apartment, and at some point they end up laughing a little bit, even though Donna's eyes are suddenly very bright.

Finally her mother lets go of her hand and squeals loudly and there it is – the reaction Felicity had been expecting.

She laughs.

Donna wraps her in a tight hug. "You always were such an overachiever, I don't even know why I'm surprised you did something like this."

But Felicity can tell her mom is smiling.

"Go big or go home, right?"

Donna giggles and holds her at arm's length, brushes back her hair from her face the way she always did ever since Felicity was a kid with wild curls and embarrassed by them.

How little some things change, and how sweet that feels in this moment.

"Oh, you got that one right. Seems like your motto – you should put that on those small card thingies."

"I'll think about it."

"So, can we hop along and see this place." Donna asks, clapping her hands excitedly. "I'm really curious."

"Yeah I think so." Felicity picks up her purse and her coffee. "You're gonna have to hang out in a hotel a few more days though, until we get at least a bed in there."

"Oh it's fine."

o

They go see the apartment and Felicity orbits around her mother like a small moon, trying to absorb some of her excitement and sheer happiness. Then they go back to their hotel room and order pizza and Coke, and eat it on the couch. They drink cheap red wine after, with popcorn, trying to guess the answers of her mother's favorite trivia show before the players do.

When she was a kid, the randomness of the facts was a delight to her curious mind.

And look at that. This is where her fantastic knowledge of the most random stuff comes from too.

Before they go to bed, Donna holds her tight and Felicity feels her bones bend. She takes a deep breath against her mother's hair, and it feels like her head has just breached the surface of the water for the first time in months.

A cold shiver crawls up her spine, shaking her bones. What is she doing?

What _has_ she been _doing_?

o

That night, she lies in the small hotel bed and childhood lessons buried beneath the layers of time and new beginnings float up, dragged to the forefront of her mind by the impersonal room of the hotel and dim light of the single lightbulb in the bathroom. The vague musty smell of the motels they stayed in on their way to Vegas, the sight of the Strip and the lights, the smell of the seedier parts of the city - all places she'd never really forgotten - even the unfamiliar bed she's laying in, they catapult her back into the body of her eleven year old self.

She's run very hard all her life to not end up here, to not feel this again. To escape from the life and all the truths that, she realizes now, made her who she is. But tonight, Felicity lets the feeling wash over her, and she realizes, it feels almost like coming home. A home that is so much more welcoming and accepting of her than the one she left behind. The memories that shake loose from the dusty corners of her brain feel more real, more hers, than the life she wrenched herself free of to come here.

Truths she learned from her childhood line up in front of her like little toy soldiers.

Like the fact that she'd cried herself to sleep after her father left, until one night she didn't, and she doesn't remember why.

But she remembers other things.

Her mother's fluttering eyelashes, soaked in tears. How hard she'd tried to be funny and how afraid she'd been when it never worked. Can a face forget what a smile is? She used to wonder about that a lot when she was a kid. Can disappointment be more than feeling? Can it be a scent, a shade of lipstick, a perfume?

Can running become a reflex?

Childhood lessons.

 _What my mother taught me._ To wear bravery like she wears lipstick on her face. To never be a slave to the back of someone else's head.

 _What my father taught me._ To run, before anyone else does.

She makes the decision, then and there. Because it doesn't matter how deep she will go into herself. How far she will be willing to punish herself. Whatever is down there will always be dark and like a webbing made of a hundred roots that drink in silence[8]. Good and bad will come from there – she came from the same place. And whatever corpses she planted in those depths will always be there too. They will either spout new flowers or keep turning. Either way she can't control it.

But she can choose. And Felicity makes that choice there, in her hometown, with the bright neon lights of an advertizing billboard shining through her window and her mother sleeping in the bed next to hers. She makes the obscene decision to do the unforgivable: keep living.

Keep living knowing that this will probably not be the last time she will have to make this choice, and that she has to live with that, too.

o

The next morning she wakes up and sees with clear eyes as if for the first time. A realization comes to her from somewhere far away, from some other side, like a little bird pecking on her window. ( _From right inside her head, buried under seven thousand layers._ )

Softly it reminds her of her name.

( _Her mother calls that name from the kitchenette, followed by the word 'coffee', and it's not so soft, but it still makes her smile_.)

Felicity gets up and goes through her routine, side by side with Donna, as if learning it from the top all over again. Shower, hair, makeup. She chooses a summer dress, white with little blue flowers and a flouncy skirt, and puts on an aggressively cheerful pink lipstick.

"We're going to be late," Felicity reminds her mother, hip propped against the vanity as Donna touches up her lipstick just before they head out.

"No, we're not," her mother chants.

Felicity huffs in irritation, smoothes back a couple of stray curls.

She still doesn't know what to do with the dead things she carries around, but it's time she figured out to move despite their weight. Time she figured out how.

She has to… somehow.

Felicity moves for the door, pulls it open. "Okay, I am leaving without you in three, two, one…"

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" Donna squeals around a laugh and follows with steps as fast as her heels allow. Felicity rolls her eyes.

They're talking about furniture and decoration styles, looking up different pictures on her phone, as they wait for the elevator. The doors ding as they open and Felicity almost steps into them without looking. But then she does look, and the shock makes her almost drop her phone.

His name is wrapped around the breath that is kicked out of her lungs at the sight of him.

"Oliver…"

* * *

[1] Mary Ruefle, from "At the Nipple," The Adamant

[2] Cassandra Troyan, from "Suicide Note I," Kill Manual

[3] Cassandra Troyan, from "Suicide Note I," Kill Manual

[4] Ada Limón, from "In a Mexican Restaurant I Recall How Much You Upset Me,

[5] Jeanann Verlee, The Mania Speaks

[6] Melissa Broder, "Cosmic Ditch" from Last Sext

[7] Nikos Kazantzakis

[8] Rainer Maria Rilke


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5: how cruel the kind

Notes: please remember that the things felicity says here, (especially the way she hoards the blame, when she's talking to oliver, and the reasons why she thinks that), come from a very skewered perspective. That's not her being right, or my pov on their break up. That's felicity being hopeless and in pain and seeing everything in the worst light. But the more they keep talking, the more real it gets, i believe.

* * *

 _i am  
_ _afraid  
_ _that if i  
_ _open  
_ _myself i will not  
_ _stop pouring. (why do i fear  
_ _becoming a river. what mountain  
_ _gave me such shame.) [1]_

He looks like he hasn't slept in days, the bags under his eyes so dark that they almost match the bruise she can see peeking from under the sleeve of his grey T-shirt.

Felicity feels dread turn her knees to jelly and she actually falters a bit.

"Is everything okay?" She can hardly hear anything over the immediate rush of the blood in her ears. "Is it John?"

Oliver shakes his head quickly.

"No! No, everything's fine. John's is fine, he's back in the base and staying there for at least a week, last I spoke to him. Which was yesterday." He adds.

The relief makes her close her eyes and take a deep breath – only then does she realize she'd been holding it. But neither she nor Oliver speak anymore and the silence deepens into awkwardness. Her mother reacts before she can even gather her thoughts into any semblance of order.

"Well at least there is no bad news," Donna says simply, with a big smile as she reaches forward to fold Oliver into a hug. "Not that it's not good to see you, hon, but what are you doing here?"

Oliver hugs her back, eyes fixed on Felicity. His silence speaks volumes to her. She hasn't seen him in what feels like a lifetime and as their eyes hold, she remembers why.

Her face suddenly feels too hot and then too cold.

Oliver finally looks at her mother, forces his lips into a smile.

"How are you Donna?"

"Oh, I'll be fine, don't worry about me." But then her mother falters a bit and shuffles on her feet, nervous. Felicity already knows what she wants to ask.

Apparently so does Oliver.

"He's okay, I think. I mean – he's trying to be. He's sorry."

Her mother huffs, makes an impatient gesture with her hand as if to dismiss the words entirely.

"Never mind that. Is he getting any help?"

Oliver seems caught on the spot. Her mother's cheerless smile makes him cringe.

"Of course not. Right. Okay!" She cheerfully shuffles into the elevator and then shuffles Oliver – with his cooperation – out of it. "I was on my way to business, and it seems Felicity will have to join me later."

"No, mom-"

"It's fine baby. The nice decorator and I will just have ourselves a nice long talk."

Felicity stands helpless as the elevator doors close and her mother waves from inside them.

She knows she could have stopped this whole thing and just gone with her mother and a big part of her wants to postpone whatever Oliver is here for.

The other part of her tells her to start doing what she _doesn't_ want to do, because following her impulses hasn't done much good for her so far.

She turns to him, meets his eye again.

"Did something else happen? Is it, you know-" she looks left and right and lowers her voice. "Arrow-related?"

Oliver gulps, looks at her from the tips of her toes to the top of her head.

"No. I just needed to talk to you."

It's not that she doesn't want to talk to him.

Okay, so maybe it is a little bit that.

But she's also very afraid of what he wants to talk about. Because she most definitely doesn't want to talk. But she also knows that her strategy has changed from now on. And that she owes him an apology if he wants one.

Or even if he doesn't, she decides.

She wants to be fair, even though she's apprehensive enough that her knees shake a little bit.

"Alright."

She turns back and they walk to her and her mother's hotel room. She unlocks the door, holds it open for him.

They've been in so many hotel rooms together, that this feels almost like déjà vu, but the timing of it is so wrong that Felicity winces away from the thought. Her hands shake as she sets down her bag on one of the plastic chairs. She sits down, folds her hands in her lap and waits.

o

The hotel room is white and simple, almost bare. There's a couch, a small kitchenette, a plastic table and at the end of the corridor there are two closed doors. Bathroom and bedroom, he assumes. It's a lot like the many other rooms he and Felicity occupied last summer before they settled in Ivy Town – it even smells the same, like refrigerator air and coffee.

Oliver sits in front of her, at the small table in the kitchenette and takes a good look at her face. She's pale and looks about as tired as she feels, the skin around her eyes and mouth tight with tension. She hadn't looked like that when she'd been talking to Donna, just before she saw him. She'd looked just as drawn, but not as tense. That tension in the line of her shoulders and that is drawing her features sharp is on him. Because of him.

But it's not like he's been faring any better in the last few days. Her absence came unexpectedly and stretched over everything, like the sky, and it shook him harder than he'd expected. He was almost ready to rip out his own hair in frustration before doing what he'd wanted to do and hopping on the first plan to Vegas to check on her himself.

"I'm sorry for not calling ahead," he starts.

"It's fine."

That feels mechanical, but he doesn't say so. It doesn't matter.

"How did you know where to find me." She asks then, and she means that one. Oliver looks down to the phone in his hands. He shows it to her as if that's an explanation.

"Your tracking program."

Her frown deepens.

"Okay."

That's a bit more like it. A bit more like what he'd expected.

She's waiting.

Oliver takes a deep breath.

"I shouldn't have left that night the way I did, without saying anything."

The surprise slackens her expression, her bewilderment so real that she can't hide it the way she hides everything else.

"You… what?"

What? That is the question, isn't it? It's the question he asked himself that night too. What the fuck has he been doing? What the fuck is _she_ doing? But he's decided that it's time to start digging himself out of the hole they both crawled into this summer and there is only one place to start.

"Oliver." She says his name the way she used to sometimes, when she was annoyed but too tired to fight. "I'm not here to stay. I just came to bring my mom home and help her settle in. So you don't have to-"

"I know you're coming back. That's not why I said it."

"Then why? I don't understand what you mean." That tiny crinkle between her brows gets more pronounced. "You don't owe me anything."

Right.

She hadn't made this easy all the while, that's not about to change now.

"We were hurting each other. I'm not going to keep pretending that we weren't." Past tense. That's in the past now. "I'm not going anywhere. I'll still be here for you if you need me, but I can't keep doing what we've been doing anymore."

She looks at him for long moments, unblinking. As if she's still not getting it.

"That was very clear to me since the night of the fundraiser, Oliver." Her voice is steady but the tips of her ears are pink. "You didn't need to fly across four states to tell me that."

"I wanted to explain."

"You don't owe me any explanations either," she rebukes quickly.

"Maybe not. But that's not why I came over here. I'm worried about you. That's why I'm here."

Her face falls. She looks away from his face, to his hands where they're folded together in his lap. He sees it coming over her: the tip of her nose turning a bit red the way it does when she's close to tears. But he also expects the way she grits her teeth through it, how she blinks and clears her throat. Her shrug seems almost unaffected.

"I know that you are. I should have never-" she closes her eyes takes a deep breath. "I should have never started- whatever that was. That's my fault and I can't take it back. I should say that I'm sorry that I hurt you, and I am, but that wouldn't really mean anything."

"I don't want an apology." Because no, it _doesn't_ mean anything. "I want you to talk to me. Or talk- talk to _him_ if it helps! If it's easier?"

She looks away with a grimace.

"There is no 'him', Oliver."

 _God damn it! God damn everything and her stubborn head too!_

"Whoever! _Someone_. This isn't about me! What do _you_ want, Felicity? And don't say-"

"I don't-"

"Don't say _nothing_!"

Her shoulders bunch up, everything about her body posture screaming retreat and Oliver passes a rough hand over his face.

 _Fuck!_

"Oliver-"

But he knows that tone, and he's done dancing to that tune.

"The night before you left with your mom, I drove by your apartment." He'd driven for hours and still ended up at her building. It wasn't his proudest moment. "I couldn't sleep, couldn't _think_ and I needed to talk to you, but didn't have the guts to knock on your door." He scoffs softly. That had been his existence that week. Caught between anger, heartbreak, regret and back again.

"Couldn't go anywhere else either though, so I went up on the roof of the building on the other side of the street."

She frowns at him at first, because she doesn't understands and doesn't like the idea of him creeping up at the edges of her life. He knows that.

But he knows exactly when she makes the connection. When she understands what he's saying, without saying it. He knows, because she pales so fast that he can almost see the blood rushing away from her face. He can see it as clear as he saw her that night, with elbows on the rail of her balcony, half her body seeming to hang out of it, looking down as if she was calculating the distance.

Felicity takes a step back, shakes her head. She always looks like a little girl when she's scared. It's the guilt that flutters in her face though, that lets him know he was right to be worried.

"I stood on that roof for three hours, watching you." His voice breaks even now, thinking about it.

There are things too terrifying to contemplate. Things the horror of which the mind cannot wrap around. It cannot contain them.

Every time she so much as twitched, he died. She's stood on that balcony, transfixed, for three hours, in a tank top, shorts and wet hair drying in the cold wind, freezing and not caring. When she'd let go of the glass of wine she'd had in her hand just to watch it fall down and smash into pieces on the pavement 15 stories below, he'd almost screamed for her.

Even now, his heart jumps in his throat at the thought. He's sweating.

"I was too afraid to leave, to come to you. I was too afraid to fucking blink."

"I wasn't going to jump!" Her words tumble out breathlessly, eyes a little too wide, voice a little too high. "I know I'm not exactly at my best right now, but I'm not suicidal, Oliver."

He stands up slowly and walks two steps to the other side of the table, gives her time to pull away if she wants to. Takes her hand, when she does not.

It's cold, clammy. Little beads of sweat dot her forehead too.

And neither of them know it, but he looks at her the same way she'd looked at him years ago, when _she'd_ been the one holding one of his hands in both of hers in a dank basement he'd hidden from her, another secret, pleading with everything she had for him to find another way, not to accept things. Not to accept death, no matter what.

Oliver's eyes sting and he has to blink a couple of times to see her clearly.

"You're scaring me, Felicity. Please. Please."

o

It's not like there had been many words between them before. Not really. Talking to her meant he might lose even that last connection with her, and then what? He had nobody and she had nobody and they would just drift?

Maybe he had been selfish too with her, as she had been with him. Maybe the truth is they'd been using each other. He doesn't know the difference anymore. What he does know that he'd seen something she didn't want him to, and it had been every fear, every nightmare anyone has ever had.

She hadn't listened to anything he'd tried before, but she did listen to that.

o

 _And I looked at all the ghosts  
I left behind & the ghosts that  
died. Left the river & stayed for  
the kill. Begged for an ending,  
begged for the suffering. Pain  
comes to those who do not ask  
for it. I am asking. I am asking._ [2]

He'd taken her hand and she'd let him; led them through the small room, to the couch in front of the TV and she'd followed. She knows he wants to talk and she has no strength for it, but she has no strength to fight back anymore either.

She doesn't know what to say, mostly. She doesn't know how to explain what happened inside her before and what changed. The shift was so subtle, she can't explain how she went from 'I should die of this' to 'I should, but I'm going to live with it'. It just happened.

The room is silent and foreign, not even the hum of her computers to keep them company and the absence of all other sounds feels threatening. It widens the space between them.

He keeps asking her to talk to him, tell him anything, but fishing out her thoughts is like out dead bodies from the great lake she's been drowning in.

How many of them can one person contain?

 _Countless… Countless!_ That's as good word as any.

There is no kind of count for lives. If you count them in numbers, they become statistic. It seems so cold. So she counts them in names. There is one for every body - sometimes it seems like Felicity Smoak is among them.

Laurel, John, Cooper, Noah, Oliver… Emanuela Dawson, David Dawson. Their three kids: Eric, Ben, Dolores. Dolores had blue eyes, hair so dark it was almost black. She had a missing front tooth - normal, she was four. She loved Peppa Pig, it was her saturday morning cartoon. Then there's the families down their street, the one after that. Sometimes she'll look at their faces for hours, sometimes she'll read Laurel's letters from when she was traveling around the world and there's not enough air in the room.

Sometimes she wakes up shaking drenched in sweat because she thinks she can't move until she does and her scars _always_ hurt, always. None of them ever told her that; and it's not fair! She hates loud noises and bright lights both. Sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night from a dream where she was just lying next to him his hands smoothing their way up and down her back, her face, and when she opens her eyes to the dark, it will take her a moment to remember why dreams feel more real than her waking hours. Sometimes she can't sleep without checking all the windows, sometimes it's her computers, sometimes-

But she can't tell him that.

"Try." he insists, sitting in front of her, elbows on his knees. "Try."

His eyes - wide and blue and so scared, keep asking her ' _Where do they keep coming from, Felicity? All these thoughts inside your head… What do i do with them?_ '

She doesn't know. If she had the first idea, she would have done it by now. She thinks she can keep living despite them maybe, no matter how much she deserves them, but how do you turn that into words?

Felicity rubs her fingers on her eyelids. She really wants him to leave. That's still true. She'd wanted it the whole time. ( _You wanted him to prove you wrong, don't lie._ ) Even when she pulled him close, she'd wanted him to leave. She'd thought he would. Thought all the grief she carried around like a walking shroud, all that anger and ugliness would keep her safe. Who the hell would ever want to touch that ever?

Who could ever hope to touch it and survive it?

But he's so stubborn and she has no idea what to do with him.

"I don't know what you want from me anymore." She confesses, and out of all the things she's said to him lately, this is the most true.

o

What he wants…

This is the farthest shore he's never been from what he wants.

What he wants is for her to eradicate this fear she planted in him. For her to stop trying to eat herself alive, for her to let him help, in a real way this time.

He wants to lay beside her and breathe with her until it all passes. He wants her to tell him every blood-soaked thought she has in her head and let him take them from her, let him bear them _with_ her. Soothe a hand along her skin the way she used to, let him be the one to carry half of every nightmare.

 _That_ is what he wants.

He just wants her to stop hurting.

o

"This isn't something you can fix, Oliver!" She says irritably as she gets up.

"I'm not trying to fix anything. I' trying to understand." he tries, with the softness of certainty this time.

 _You can't, you can't, you ca-_

She turns to him, angry. "How could you understand this? This is _nothing_ like anything you have ever-"

His eyes are steady, heavy. "I can understand better than most. I'm closer to it than most."

Yes, his past is crawling with bodies too, but not like _this_.

Her laughter is dry. "Malcolm Meryn is closer."

"Did you _want_ to kill all those people." Oliver asks harshly, the anger in his voice grabbing her attention. "Did you deliberately set out to drop a nuke on their front yard?"

No. But it's so simple, really, to undo that particular line of reasoning. He should know better than anyone.

"Intention doesn't matter to the dead, Oliver."

"I'm not talking about the dead. I'm talking about you."

Felicity presses the heels of her palms against her eyes. Takes deep breaths and leans against the back of the couch. Tries to be calm about this. Logical and cold.

Hard facts.

"I'm a mass murderer."

it's the first time she's said it out loud. It sounds stranger than she'd thought.

She waits for him to deny it ( _waits for some untold terrible thing to happen_ ). Oliver only stares at her.

"I'm the reason a whole city was wiped out of existence." laughter bubbles up her throat along with everything else. "I am… wow, I am what Merlyn and Ra's al Ghul wanted to be. Where they failed, _I_ succeeded. I am what villains wanna be when they grow up. Oh my god."

She doubles over with the weight of it, the nausea rolling in her stomach.

"Do you remember all the targets? All the cities that were supposed to be destroyed?"

Remember? That seems simplifying it. Her fingers still ache when she thinks about her and her father sitting side by side in front of multiple screens, fighting against the impossible, against time.

"All those people living in all those cities, because of you. Millions of people, Felicity."

She counts the tiles on the floor, adds and multiplies the numbers, trying to get back to some measure of calm.

"All those families are safe now, because of you. They get to go home, live their lives, because of what you did that day. _Felicity_."

He wants her to look at him when he says her name like that. She does without really thinking about it. Some things can't seem to change.

He's closer than she expected, his thigh almost touching hers, almost. He tilts his head so that his eyes are on the same level with hers.

"You saved the world, Felicity. Remember?"

Felicity blinks fast, dazed somewhat. She's never thought of it that way for some reason.

"That doesn't erase the ones I failed."

And that, now that she remembers, is the reason why she has not.

Oliver sighs. "It doesn't erase the good you did either. And if you need someone to remind you of that every day, I will."

She looks away from him then.

o

Oliver wants to say other things too. Things that sound a lot more like 'thank you for sharing this with me' and 'I love you' and 'I would do this for you, with you, even if i didn't', but that's not what she needs.

"It's not just-" her voice breaks and she clears her throat. "It's everything. I never meant-"

But she stops again, shakes her head, as if she thinks better of what she meant to sa. Whatever it is, she lets it drop.

It takes her awhile to find words again.

"You'd think the worst thing anyone could ever feel it's sadness or grief, or loss. But it's not, is it?"

No it's not. But nobody can imagine the terrifying weight of nothingness until one gets there.

 _Jesus…_

She's staring straight ahead when she says it.

"I hurt you. Don't deny it." She adds before he can even say anything. And because she's not looking at him, he knows what she's talking about.

Oliver wraps his hand around hers, holds it tight.

"It doesn't matter."

She wrenches her hand away from his grip. "Don't. Don't do that." Her voice hardens, her eyes too. "It _matters_. It _has_ to matter."

"Okay." He nods, ever so slightly. "Okay."

Her eyes narrow on him.

"I did it on purpose, you know."

It's as if she wants him to react but not in the way he is reacting. She wants his anger and condemnation, but he can't give her what is not there.

"I hurt you _on purpose_."

"On purpose." he repeats with numb lips, unable to believe it even though it had crossed his mind before.

She looks both ashamed and relieved at the same time.

"Was it punishment?" he asks her quietly. "For… everything?"

Her face crumbles. She gets up and starts pacing. Hands smoothing her hair down, her skirt.

"Maybe it was?" but her voice shakes. "I don't know. I don't _know_. I knew I was hurting you but- I guess I didn't care."

Oliver sighs. "I don't believe that."

She does care. More than anything, about everything. She cares in such a way that she is always just a little bit surprised when the world lets her down. When she lets herself down. That's what's not letting her live now, the weight of thousands of souls she keeps dragging around with her wherever she goes, like chains around her ankles.

"Stop making excuses for me. _I_ did this."

"I made my own choice."

Felicity scoffs. "Please! Like i didn't know _exactly_ how to push!"

"You needed me, and I was there. It's how it's always been."

Her face is awash in disbelief it's as if she's getting angry at him for not being angry enough. "Not like this. I never took any of your crap lying down, you know that."

"That's different."

"It's not!"

"It's _different_ because I _need_ you to push back." he insists, frowning at her fiercely. She gets up and he follows, unwilling to let it go. "I needed you to be there for me when I had no idea what the fuck I was doing. I _needed_ you to fight me.

" _You_ needed not to be alone!"

Felicity starts pacing around the little living room. "There's a limit to how much you get to give. There is a line somewhere and we crossed it. I made you-"

"You didn't _make me_ do anything. And I don't give a fuck about lines."

She groans, looks up as if asking for patience from the god she doesn't believe in.

"I'm _trying_ to apologize."

"Well, stop trying!"

Felicity turns to him, eyes bright and lips pursed with frustration. "I _can't_ because you don't seem to get it! What I did- I don't even know what kind of person does that, Oliver."

He takes in the wrecked look on her face, the nervous energy zapping through her.

He really is missing the point here, isn't he?

Oliver steps forward, takes her gently by the shoulders.

"I accept your apology. Alright? I forgive you." he says slowly, every word with its own weight and the full measure of his belief. "You're forgiven."

Maybe if he'd slapped her it might have surprised her less.

"You don't know what to do with that either, do you?"

Her bottom lip shakes and she bites it. "I don't know what to do with any of it."

Oliver looks down, smiles at her bright yellow heels. "That's okay."

"None of this is okay. None of this is who we are." The smile on her face is small and bitter. "Who we were."

He seizes on that immediately. It calms him down, actually.

"I know who we are, Felicity. I make a lot of mistakes, but I know how to love you."

She closes her eyes, shakes her head a little bit.

"It's not love if it hurts, Oliver. There are other names for what that is."

"You don't get to pick and chose. That's not how it works for me." He promised for better or worse. This is just worse. "And by the way – the whole 'love not hurting' part, I've never actually found that to be true."

He knows his compass is fucked up, but there are some truths that are very clear in his mind. Living to the extreme of the world and coming back from it taught him that love can be as terrible as it can be sacred. It can save you, breathe life into you when you think you're an inch away from death and it can be terrible too, and scar as much as any knife. But you have to let people in for it to be that way. You have to have their hands wrapped around your bloody beating heart. For it to hurt you have to love, first. You have to care, or it won't touch you.

Last summer was bright and it was the closest he'd ever come to happiness maybe in all his life. But they'd stripped each other bare and laid all their pieces side by side to get there. Took off clothes and took off skin too, offered all their soft parts. He's surprised and hurt she doesn't remember.

No, love - love is blood.

"I don't _care_ if it's true; it's not _fair_." She says, her objection of the idea all over her, from her tone to the look on her face.

"I think I want to decide what's fair for me, Felicity."

"This is not about you!" she snaps, her eyes bright with anger. "It's not- this was never about you."

"What is it about?" he already has an idea. It just scares him too much to think it. "If none of this was about me and you didn't want to hurt me, then who did you want to hurt Felicity?"

o

She holds his eyes and lets him see it.

What's the point of hiding anymore? She can tell just by his question that he already suspects it. Oliver never fishes for answers, anyway. He confirms what he already knows.

Did he?

No, no he didn't. He still does not. He never would have gone anywhere near her if he'd even so much as suspected.

But she wears her answer openly on her face.

 _Who else? Who else was there left to hurt?_

A great breath escapes him, and it's as if his lungs are concaving. He links his hand behind his neck and turns away from her and she wants the earth to open up and swallow her whole.

o

 _Nothing ever ends poetically. It ends, and we turn it into poetry. All that blood was never once beautiful It was just red. [3]_

 _How did you not see it? You wanted to keep her from falling someplace dark and alone, and all you did is help her hurt herself._

 _Fuck! Fuck!_

He bites his lip, tries to keep everything he is feeling inside. How much of an idiot he'd been. He'd given himself up to her, ' _take me, split me, i will tear in half for you_ ' as if it was some great sacrifice, because it felt better to think he was doing something rather than stand aside helpless to the pain of someone he loved more than life. And all the while-

How could _she_ do this?

" _Felicity…_ " A question and an accusation and a plea all at once. All the hurt he feels is there in his voice. He doesn't know what he wants from her first.

She sniffles. "I'm sorry."

But she's not sorry for herself, is she?

She'd always said she was using him. She never said for what though. Never.

"Why?"

"What?"

Oliver turns to look at her from all the way across the room. As far away from her as he could get without getting out.

"Why?" he asks again. Why for everything. All of it.

She shrugs like it's all been for no special reason.

" _Because_. I couldn't figure out why not. Because i guess this is who i am now. I'm sorry."

The casual way she talks about it enrages him in ways he never knew he could feel. That she wanted to hurt herself and chose him to do it makes him want to scream.

 _How_ dare _you. I love you! Don't you see it?_

He does love her with everything he has. Is that wrong?

 _I'm sorry._

But he's not sorry either. He's not. Still, even after this.

Diggle would call it a blindspot, but it's more than that now. She is all he sees. Everything _else_ is the blindspot.

Time has tried over and over to teach him something important: human beings cannot become the homes of other human beings. But Oliver doesn't know how to learn that. Maybe that is the root of his blindness. He doesn't know how to stop looking for salvation in other people.

How could she not be? She's so bright, so perfect.

Except she's not.

And human beings are not homes; they're labyrinths. She tried to teach him her trap doors, but he didn't listen.

o

 _Come with all your shame, come with your swollen heart, I've never seen anything more beautiful than you. [4]_

He sits down on one of the plastic chairs that seem too frail for him, and she watches him wearily. He leans his elbows on his knees and rests his head in his hands, the heel of his palms pressed against his eyes as if to relieve the pressure.

Great, she's given him a headache.

"Oliver… I'm sorry."

She is. She is so sorry.

She'd thought she'd lived through the worst she would have been able to survive, but this now, bearing witness to the pain she's caused him, is just as bad.

The full extent of what she'd done hits her then. That she dragged him down right along with her where he had no place being. Down in dark places where he had bled and fought his way out of. He sunk into them again for her and she had no right to do that. None.

Maybe right after Havenrock, this is the worst thing she ever did.

She hadn't thought about any of it. Her own thought had swallowed her whole. There had been no room in her pain for anyone else.

"I didn't think-"

He glances up, eyes red and watery. "What?"

The words get stuck in her throat.

"You didn't think it would hurt?"

Felicity looks away. Sits down on the chair next to his heavily.

"No, I did know that. I guess i'm not a very nice person."

Oliver looks at her for long moments and then sighs deeply and leans back on the chair, wipes his hands down his face.

"You're a great person, Felicity. My favorite person. You're just in pain. It happens."

"Not like this it doesn't."

His little understated chuckle is not soft or amused this time. It's hollow.

"Trust me, it does. Worse than this, even." He holds her gaze without blinking. "I've been there, too."

There are no depths she can fall into, it seems, that he wouldn't be able and willing to follow.

But she doesn't want him to.

If she can still want anything, let it be this. Let it be something good for him, something better.

o

"Is there anything you can't forgive?"

He's taken aback by her vehemence. When she grabs his hand, he almost flinches.

"Listen to me, Oliver. You might have done a lot of things, horrible things, and I know that you so desperately want to believe that you can come back from that. And you can. You _have_. But that doesn't mean that to prove it you have to forgive every shitty thing that ever happens to you. That's not what it's about." Her eyes are wide and alight, intense enough to almost look angry. "You don't owe anybody anything. Not a thing. Not even me and _especially_ not after this fucking mess."

She still doesn't get it, does she? After everything they've been through… Has she lost faith in him so much? Or did she never really understand?

He says it simply. The way he feels it. "I love you."

Felicity inhales a sharp breath. She lets go of his hand and takes off her glasses, presses her fingers against her eyelids.

"You keep saying that like it means something!" The tears she refuses to let out are in her voice though. The body always betrays some kind of truth, every time.

Was it his fault? Did he not show it well enough, did he not love deep enough?

"It means everything to me. _Everything_."

"No."

Maybe it's because she thinks everyone she loves will leave her eventually. Maybe it's because everything he did, every mistake that made her say 'enough' she saw as proof that he would leave too.

And it's so unfair. He didn't go anywhere, did he?

"Yes." Oliver insists. "And maybe you don't believe it, but I'll still be here tomorrow. And the day after that. And the one after that. I promised you for better or worse and this is just worse.[5]"

"Oliver."

He never again wants to hear his own name coming out of her mouth like that. Like he's hurting her and she needs him to stop.

His teeth click closed on reflex, but then he forces himself to say the words.

"I don't know any other way to love."

She wipes angrily under her eyes and he knows she doesn't believe him.

 _Why can't you see it, Felicity? Everyone else can. You are the love of my life. You are the love of my life. You are the love of my life._

 _Y. That perfect letter. The wishbone, fork in the road, empty wineglass.  
The question we ask over and over.[6]_

"I made a mistake. I made _one_ mistake and you left." It stings more than he cares to admit.

"Your mistake lasted _three months_!" she snaps back, turning her head so fast that her little ponytail slaps her cheek. "That's not a moment of weakness, that's pattern of behavior!"

Their voices echo around the walls, through them maybe. Neither realized nor gives a shit.

He wants to tear his hair out. "I had _no_ choice."

"There is always a choice." she says as she walks to the kitchen and angrily starts to put the filters into the coffee machine. "There is always another way. You just didn't find it and you didn't let me help you find it. Or anyone."

She shoves the pot in place and turns the machine on. Leans heavily on the counter, locking her elbows.

"Why are we even having this conversation," she murmurs, as if to herself. " _Nothing_ has changed. Neither of us will ever change. I am always going to need you to include me and you're always going to need to keep secrets."

"No, I won't!"

She turns towards him and finds him standing a foot away from her.

"Yes, you _will_!" Felicity repeats, poking his chest with her finger to make her point. "Because you need to. And you know what, maybe you have a right to it."

"Felicity! You're not making sense."

"Yes I am. I _am_ making sense." But then the intensity fades, leaving behind only exhaustion. "We hurt each other, Oliver. What we did - what we _could_ do - I don't want to ever be the reason for that look on your face again. I don't."

Determination solidifies in her eyes the way water turns to ice, and there is some kind of irony here – that she won't give him what he wants because she doesn't want to hurt him.

This hurts too. It's the same thing. At this point it's just a matter of choosing death by what.

o

"I can be better. You know I can."

"It's not about you needing to be better. You don't need to be anything." With an exhale that is more a whisper than actual words, she lays the truth on his feet like a dead animal. "I'm just not good for you."

"What?"

She purses her lips and closes her eyes, gives him that little smile that shoves him back two years in a hospital hallway. He'd apologized then too and she'd known what he would say before it ever left his mouth.

He feels cold sweat trickling down her back. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about you and me. About how we hurt each other, and confuse each other. And how maybe… maybe we just work so much better as friends and partners and not anything other than that." And he can see it in her eyes that she believes it. "Because maybe what happened would have never happened if it wasn't me, if I…"

He reaches for her without thought and pulls his hand back when she moves away.

"What are you _talking_ about?"

Is it possible for the world to end twice?

"I made a mistake." She looks at him right in the eye when she says it. "I made you think it's your fault you couldn't trust me, and I'm sorry for that. I really am."

"That's not what happened, Felicity."

She doesn't seem to even hear him.

"It's not your fault you couldn't trust me. It's _my_ fault. And it's obvious that I'm not what you need, to be happy or healthy, or to feel safe? And that's okay."

She looks at him like she wants him to believe it.

"That's _insane_."

Felicity's expression blanks out. "It's what happened."

"No, it's not." he can't believe what he's hearing. "That has nothing to do with what happened. _I_ made a mistake. I fucked up, it had nothing to do with you."

"No? Because it usually takes two to tango, Oliver!"

"Why I kept William a secret had nothing to do with you."

She closes her eyes, her lips pinch. "That's a lie too. Just because you believe it doesn't make it true, Oliver."

"It is true! I was- I was scared and confused. And I didn't know what to do, and Barry said-"

She turns away from him, anger returning. "Do _not_ bring Barry into this."

o

 _I cut from the bone and still the bone  
remembers, still it wants (so much, it wants)[7]_

"You should have trusted me."

She's curled on one side of the couch. He's sitting on one of the chairs of the kitchen table. The silence is another presence in the room, so thick that even her broken whisper, tear-soaked and rough, carries.

"It wasn't about trust. Samantha-"

"No. Not with that. I mean you should have trusted me to love you anyway."

And he freezes. Turns to look at her. She's looking at him too. Her eyes are clear, sharp.

"I know you." She says softly. "I know you as well as you know me. I know why you didn't tell me."

He's so tired. He passes a hand down the back of his head, slouching on the table. "No, what you know is why you _think_ I didn't tell you."

She doesn't react to that though.

"I've seen you do it so many times. With Thea, Laurel. Your mom. You even tried with Sara. You just can't seem to believe that the people you love, love you back just as much. And you're so scared they're going to judge you for all the things _you_ judge you. So you lie and avoid and hide things. Am i wrong?"

He doesn't say anything.

No, for fucks sake, she's not wrong. He can't help it. He can't imagine anyone knowing the things he knows about himself and wanting anything to do with him anyway. It's the way his brain is wired. He'd be the first to change it if he could, but he fucking _can't_!

"I thought, after working together so many years, after trusting me for so long to be your friend no matter what, you wouldn't do that with me. I thought after last year and what happened, that we'd both be better than that."

Oliver sighs. "I'm always going to want to hide the fucked up parts of me. I'm not exactly proud of them."

"You don't have to be. But you should have trusted me to be with you in spite of them. The way I've always been." She leans her head against the back of the couch, hand curling around the side of her throat, drained and slow.

"But you weren't." Oliver reminds her softly.

From across the room she meets his eye and she's so still that he swears she's not breathing.

"You did leave me," he says softly. "You found out and you broke up with me."

"No. You don't get to do that." Her refusal is so categorical that she doesn't even need to add any sharpness to her tone. "You don't get to use my reaction to your lie as a reason for your lie. It doesn't work that way."

Oliver takes a deep breath.

"No, probably not. But you didn't even give me a chance to change your mind. Don't you think I deserved _one_ conversation? Didn't I earn at least that much from you, Felicity?"

One tear slips past the bridge of her nose and all the way down to the red tip, before she wipes it away. More follow, as quietly as the first, others disappearing past her temple, soaking the faded pink fabric of the couch she's leaning against.

"You did, yeah. But I couldn't give you that, because that's not who I am." She gulps. Takes a deep breath. "You broke my heart. I didn't want you to change my mind."

"I'm sorry."

"I know you are. But it doesn't change anything. You'd make the same choice again, wouldn't you?"

"I don't know." And he doesn't. Knowing what he does, he sure as fuck would try for a better choice this time. One that doesn't end up with him losing everything and everyone he loves.

"You would. Because that's who you are. And I'd probably still drop everything and run, cause that's who I am. It's on both of us. We just don't fit like that, obviously."

He shakes his head. Refuses it. He's so _angry_ at this whole discussion.

"There is nothing wrong with _us_. Us being an _us_ was the happiest I've ever been - and so were you! And I refuse to believe it was a mistake or that it was for _nothing_!"

He doesn't realize that he's raising his voice until he stops talking and the silence around them is so deep that it rings in his ears.

Felicity doesn't seem to even notice though. There's the kind of sadness on her face that he's seen before a couple of times. In a hospital corridor. In the lair, looking for his son, nodding, not speaking, not looking at him. A loss so sharp it hurts to look at; born and accepted in the exact same moment. ( _Loss to her must feel like an old guest coming back home and that's the problem. He's fighting with time, not just his own mistakes… and so is she_ )

"We missed a step somewhere." She tells him calmly. "Did something wrong and broke it."

" _I_ broke it." Shriveled his own happiness in his hands, the way he has every other time. _He_ has the track record here, not her.

"No. _We_ did. _Both_ of us, Oliver." she wipes her face clean, straightens her glasses. When she talks again, it's with a new conviction. "But we can move forward from this. We can. We're not right for each other, but that doesn't mean nobody ever will be. Im sure-"

"Goddamnit Felicity!"

He walks to her, eating up the space between them in a few strides, takes her hands in his. She resists. He doesn't let go, pulls her to her feet.

"So let's do better." He pulls at her and until she's in his space, links their fingers together. The closest he's felt to her in months.

And she comes, she even holds his hand back, but she shakes her head at him.

"I promise I can be better."

"Oh, Oliver I'm so sorry."

He's lost count of how many emotional ditches he's been in today, how many he thought would be where he'd be buried. But this moment here is where fear finally triumphs.

She's as sure now as she was the first two times she gave him back that ring, made him swallow his promises.

"I'm sorry I made you think it was your job to fix this. It's not. We _did_ try, and we almost ruined each other Oliver. Once was enough."

o

She sits on the bed, the door of the room ajar. He's outside, sitting on the floor, leaning against the frame of the door.

"So what. Do you regret _everything_? Was all of it a mistake?"

She doesn't say anything for long moments and Oliver squeezes his eyes shut, rubs a hand over his chest where it hurts.

Her voice comes muffled. "I don't know. I can't tell the difference anymore."

He knows though. He does.

"I know you love me, Felicity. And I love you more than _anything_." He is sure in her love as she must be sure in his. She used to tell him every day.

And love does now what it does always: it gnaws.

"That's not the point," she says around exhale and walks out of the room. He follows her with his eyes but doesn't move.

"That's the only point there is, to any of it!"

Felicity closes her eyes. The skin around them looks puffy and thin, a deep pink that looks almost bruised. "Maybe it is, but it's not enough. And I can't try again."

He bangs his head against the wall behind him in frustration.

"Why _not_?" he asks through gritted teeth. He's been asking the same version of this question all day.

"Because it _hurts_!" Felicity yells, loud, angry and exhausted, shattering the quiet. "It hurts thinking about it and talking about it. Standing here talking to you about this is killing me and I'm so… I'm so tired! I'm so tired of not being enough. And I don't want to make the same mistakes again. There is only so much I can give."

o

There is no hiding this. No burying it. It's still fresh and overflowing with blood. One look and they're an open wound again.

There is no going back.

o

 _Matthew ten, verse twenty-nine: "Not one sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it."  
But the sparrow still falls.[8]_

"You're wrong, you know."

Her face is pressed against the glass of the window arms wrapped around herself. She's too tired to start this argument again, but they have stripped each other of so many layers, that they started peeling back flesh and bone. And it hurts, but it's also freeing. Like bleeding out poison, in a way.

There's nothing she can deny him now. Not now.

"About what?"

"It wasn't your fault either."

Felicity sighs. "Oliver…"

"No, because it's wrong. It wasn't _your_ fault I couldn't trust you. Felicity, look at me, please."

She does.

"If I had been with anyone else, the same thing would have happened."

"Maybe." She admits, because her mind can accept possibility, but is more concerned with probability. "And maybe someone who's not me would have understood you better. Maybe you deserve better, ever thought about that?"

"If my life was about what I _deserve_ , I would have been long dead by now," he tells her flatly. "I don't want you to be different. I don't want anyone else."

Felicity looks away from him.

"You don't always want what's good for you. And frankly neither do I, so…"

She pushes away from the window, but he reaches for her wrist at the same time, stopping her. Felicity meets his eyes, and they're calm, they're sure.

"If it had been anyone else, it would have gone the same way. You said so."

"What?"

"What happened, happened because of who we are, the mistakes that define us. It wasn't anyone's fault."

She pauses, considers it. Considers him.

"That's a nice way to think about it."

"It's the truth. And I will never believe that we ruined each other. If any ruining happened, then we did it to ourselves."

She fixes her eyes ahead, unfocused, to some point beyond his shoulder. "Yeah, I guess so."

o

He pauses at the door, before he leaves.

"I'll see you at the bunker?" One last time, just to make sure. Because he can't leave without making sure.

The look on her face is opaque, he can't read it.

"Yeah." she says finally. "I'll see you there in a couple of days."

Oliver nods, his fingers flex on the handle and he has to convince them to loosen their grip, let it go.

"I'll see you then."

o

 _early morning touches my face_  
like a burn, i apologize profusely.  
every shard of sun revelatory; it says  
forgiveness is arbitrary,  
what we do to ourselves doesn't  
matter.[9]

She decides to drive back. Rents a car, hugs her mother tight enough to feel it for days, and goes.

The drive helps.

She has to pull over a couple of times, because she can't seem to breathe for thinking too much, but then she puts the car in gear again and drives. And this time, when the memories come, she lets them wash over her, terrified and ready. She feels them as if through a veil… but she feels them.

o

Living, instead of just crawling by, doesn't really feel better or worse. It's just different, and it just happens. One day you take a break and it reaches your lungs and that's it. No magic.

Every day Felicity has to remind herself that it's not the end if she has to put effort into doing things that before she never thought about, but she's getting used to that. This is her life now.

When she goes back to Star City, the first thing she does is call the movers and give them the address of the loft. If she has to start somewhere, she figures she should start with the first thing she ran from and work her way up from there. Face her monsters with her eyes wide open this time.

Be brave.

She has a small moment where she wonders if she's doing it again - trying to do penance by hurting herself, but it passes. She's wise enough in the shades of pain now to know that this doesn't feel the same.

Standing in the middle of the open floor plan of the loft reminds her of the way she used to think she felt her legs hurt when she was paralyzed. Phantom pain.

That's the way she misses him.

Felicity closes her eyes and lets herself feel it. Then she opens then, goes to the bathroom to grab the cleaning supplies and starts working.

o

She hesitates in front of the elevator of the bunker when she goes back, but only for a few moments.

Then she goes in and sits down in her chair. Breathes a little, wakes up her systems. The swirling sound of the fans waking is soothing in a way. A familiarity that aches a little, the way pressing on a bruise does.

She activates her searches, updates herself on her city's activity.

When Oliver shows up, the only thing out of the ordinary is how they look at each other: that one beat longer than socially acceptable. But that has always been there between them, and maybe that can become its own comfort too.

o

That night before he leaves, he lingers. She can tell he wants to ask her something, so she gets up slowly and walks to him instead.

"Hi."

The way he's a bit apprehensive and how he watches her approach him, makes Felicity stop a good distance away. She swallows her own shame and smiles instead.

"I'm going to be okay, you know. I am."

And she is. Because she has decided. No take backs. No bullshit.

"And I'm going to find a way to deal with this that's not- that doesn't hurt. A way that I can live with."

Oliver's face falls a little.

"Felicity…"

"I've found a couple of therapists that I'm going to look into. I think… yeah. I think that would be best."

Oliver licks his lips and gives her a little nod, a smile so small that it seems almost shy.

"That's good. I'm really proud of you, Felicity."

She rolls her shoulders, uncomfortable with the praise. "Yeah, let's not jinx it. I have no idea what I'm doing."

"You'll figure it out."

He sounds so sure, it's like he never doubted it.

"I think you should too, by the way."

He tries to smile. "Figure things out? Probably."

She rolls her eyes at him.

"See a therapist."

This is not the first time she's brought it up. Last summer she wanted him to, and later as well. Oliver's mind hasn't changed, but the she's even more determined now.

"They don't need to know specifics, it can work either way. And I've never- I thought i understood before, but i didn't really _know_ how important this is. It matters, Oliver."

"Alright. I'll think about it.'

She arches one eyebrow at him. "The way you thought about it last summer?"

He gives her one of those understated laughs of his: half a sigh, half a chuckle.

"No. Really, this time."

He says it like he means it, but if there is one thing she doubts him on it's this. She doesn't want to insist though. Things feel calm between them for the first time in so long and she doesn't want to crack that.

She will mention it later though, maybe. After she's vetted some people for him.

"So-" she pauses, takes a breath and steels her spine. "Are we okay?"

She's dreaded asking this question, but she has to.

His surprise answers him before he does. "Of course we are."

'We are' is calming. 'Of course' is less so.

Felicity feels her eyes sting a little and blinks up at the bright lights of the ceiling.

"Okay. Just thought I should ask, you know." She moves her eyes to his face again, and it doesn't matter anymore if he can see through her anymore. "I'm really tired of losing friends."

He takes her hand first - asking permission. She's the one who steps into his arms when he pulls her in gently. Felicity takes a deep breath into the fabric of his T-shirt and lets herself be held.

It's been so long since she's felt this close to anyone. The first hug she's allowed herself to feel had been her mother's.

She shudders, and links her hands at the small of his back, burrows closer.

His open palm traces a line up her back and then wraps around the back of her neck.

"You're never going to lose me, I promise."

She feels a light kiss on her cheek, the touch of his stubble tickling her skin and tries to keep breathing through it. It's easier not to fall apart with his arms around her. Easier to feel better knowing that she didn't ruin everything and that despite everything, she still has a friend in him.

She believes that that is the truest they have ever been to each other, and holds that as dear as everything else that came after it, maybe even dearer. She can work her way to forgiveness knowing she still has that.

It's a place to start. The very best place, really. Hope cracks awake beneath the calluses worn around her heart. It hurts a little bit, but it's a good ache too.

* * *

[1] Jamie Oliveira, "Erosion"

[2] Venetta Octavia, "forest walking"

[3] Kait Rokowski

[4] Warsan Shire

[5] Peacefulboo's prompt that inspired this expression and that broke my heart

[6] Marjorie Celona

[7] Ada Limón

[8] The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

[9] SPECIFIC AFFLICTION / agooduniverse


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6: out of the lion's mouth

 _"It ends or it doesn't. That's what you say. That's how you get through it. The tunnel, the night, the pain, the love. It ends or it doesn't. If the sun never comes up, you find a way to live without it. If they don't come back, you sleep in the middle of the bed, learn how to make enough coffee for yourself alone._

 _Adapt. Adjust. It ends or it doesn't. It ends or it doesn't. We do not perish."_

 _Caitlyn Siehl_

Some things are harder than others. Making the same choice over and over again when it seems not to lead her anywhere better, would have sounded insane to Felicity some time ago. The definition of it.

Now it sounds like living.

It's the choice she keeps making. No matter how much she's lost; even if it's _herself_ she's lost. Even when all that is left of the life she built is its ashes; burnt remains of something beloved, something with meaning.

Grief came back and it sat heavy on her, thickened the air and made it feel like water, more fit for drowning in than breathing in. The overflowing sorrow weights heavier than the body sometimes, fills a whole ocean. She understands now why she jumped from distraction to distraction, before: the vastness of emptiness she sometimes feels is unbearable. But she lets herself feel it.

Heartache washes over her and withdraws, leaving behind nothingness, and this pendulum becomes more than just states of being. They are the tide of her mind. The crash of violent waves of sorrow against the cliffs of her feels real. As their withdrawing of it from the shore, just like the sea is pulled by the moon, feels real. The tide rises and falls and pieces of her, lost once and now found, wash up on the shore of her mind like the bones of a shipwreck.

And yet, the body was made to withstand this, she tells herself. She was _built_ to survive it, even if she doesn't think so. But she _knows_ so. If this were not true, she would have broke under her life's weight.

And if the cracks are there, so what? Maybe she did break. She splintered into a thousand pieces, tore in half, so what? Maybe she is full of wounds, but she's still standing.

She learned how to among warriors, from the very day she was born.

o

Felicity is still on her tablet as she walks into the building. She's tweaking the code of the facial recognition program she borrowed from the FBI, the little open window on the side letting her know that the diagnostics on the systems in the bunker is still up and running.

Felicity glances at the time as she waits. She's early, as usual, but that's just her compulsive need to be on time that makes her so, not so much the crippling anxiety about being here. After two months of visiting Doctor Crosetti's little office once a week, she's actually rather relaxed about the whole thing. It's certainly not the easiest thing she's ever done, talking about the things that hurt the most. For all her capacity for words, Felicity never really did use them for that. It feels strange. Foreign, almost like she's pretending. But the doc keeps telling her that that is normal too and Felicity keeps trying to believe it.

She's getting better at it though.

The first time she actually set foot in Croseti's office, she remembers thinking that it didn't really look like an office – but somewhere between one and a living room. It had a minimalistic design mostly. A high ceiling that made the room look bigger than it was, a desk for the doc's stuff, lots of books, a couple of evergreen plants. Felicity's favorite spot in that office was the couch. It was soft enough to want to curl up in, like it was trying to give her a hug every time she sat down.

She hadn't appreciated that much the first time she'd sat on it though. She'd been an ball of nervous energy and almost cancelled twice. But she showed up eventually. And worked hard for herself.

She'd been on the verge of never coming back a couple of times since then, but never gone through with that instinct no matter what she was thinking or feeling. She's looked hard down that road – where giving up on this would take her – and she knows exactly what lays down there. She doesn't want to go back to it.

Now she knocks on the wooden door, walks in, switches her tablet off and flops on the sofa.

She can hear the doc's small smile in her voice. "Hello, Felicity."

Felicity sighs, straightens and pulls her heels off, tucks her feet under her and leans against the sofa's soft arm.

"Hi."

"Long week?"

"Long and straight from hell, yes." Felicity confirms.

The doc nods, serious. Her dark curls are in a bun today. "Tell me about it."

Felicity hesitates for a moment, working around how to tell her therapists the truth without any incriminating green details.

"Just your run of the mill 'stress at work' case, I suppose." She admits finally. "Though it's not really like we work together all the time."

The doc frowns a moment and then understanding sinks in. "Oliver." she says simply.

Felicity lips pull together in a moue of dissatisfaction. It's not even a question anymore. Lots of her issues lead back to the same places these days. And her day to day ones usually lead to Oliver.

It irritates her, actually. But it's not like she can escape it.

"He takes _crazy_ chances. And a lot of responsibility for everything, even things he really shouldn't _have_ to do alone. And I'm trying to get him to change that, but he won't _listen_ to me!"

She almost growls the words out, making a choking motion with her hands and then dropping them down and leaning her head against the back of the sofa.

"Does it affect you, all the responsibility he's taking?" Flavia asks calmly.

A myriad of thoughts that go through Felicity's head at that question. She's always been good at dealing with the fact that any one time any of her teammates go out could be the last. They keep getting sharp reminders of their own mortality almost every year. And something that Felicity has come to understand intimately, is that it wouldn't even take some super villain to being about death.

Oliver had explained it to her once, given words to her perception. _One_ lucky hit from even the most ordinary of criminals out there, is all it would take. Just one of his adversaries having one good day.

And then she'd lose him too. Just because he's too stubborn and hates change.

Because she hadn't insisted enough – hadn't been convincing enough; had been too weary of being too pushy because that's not who they are now…

It makes her _furious_.

"Yeah, it does." Felicity says simply.

"What goes through your mind when this happens?"

Fear, anxiety, crippling frustration? The list could go on and on.

Felicity groans softly. " _'Oh god, oh god, what now'_?"

The corner of the doc's lips turn upwards.

"How about you give me specifics."

"Right. We're fans of those." Felicity nods.

"Just tell me what you're worried about." Flavia says calmly and Felicity is reminded of why she likes her doc so much, even though she's hardly older than Felicity herself. She has the unfettered ability to take the things Felicity freaked out about and make it calmer. Closer to reason.

"I'm worried, because there is only so much the people he's working with right now can do to help, and it's not enough. Because he's straining himself and one day the consequences of his stubbornness are going to catch up to him. I don't that to happen. I _really_ don't."

Not again. Not ever.

"Have you told Oliver this?"

Felicity almost snorts. "No."

The unspoken 'obviously' in her tone makes the doc raise one eyebrow.

"Why not?"

"I'm trying to find ways to talk to him without him having to factor me and my feelings into his decisions." Felicity explains - and yes, it should be obvious.

Talking about how she'd done precisely that all summer long and how it had left them both in tatters had been one of the hardest things she'd had to do.

Flavia considers that. "You've made it clear that you're part of each other's lives. So you are a factor, either way, Felicity."

Well- when she puts it that way.

"I'm trying not to be, though." Felicity admits, suddenly exhausted. "But I guess… I mean, we're still friends. But after what happened this summer, I really don't want to do anything to hurt him again, so I'm trying to keep my distance."

The doc hums. "I see you're still really worried about hurting him. But do you think keeping your distance is going to help with that?"

Felicity frowns. "I'm not keeping distance like _that_. I'm being a friend. Friendly. Friend-like."

 _Lots of repetition in there Felicity. Chill._

She takes a breath.

She had spent years wearing down that particular patch of earth though. Oliver Queen's friend. At first it had felt impossible to learn what to do with all the leftover love inside her and all the overflowing hurt. How to care about him from afar, without making the distance into half a continent between them. She didn't have a lot of experience with that one.

Maybe that was why they had gone so sideways that summer. One of the many reasons, anyway.

Felicity passes a hand down her face, not caring much about the make up being smudged in the way.

"We _need_ the distance." She insists, looking at her nails. "It's been a hard year and we're both trying to figure ourselves out. And I don't want him misunderstanding anything. We're done. beyond done. Distant is the norm now."

She huffs in frustration, shakes her head trying to shake the dark turn of her thoughts out.

"That's not the issue anyway. The real problem here is that Oliver keeps waiting for his _old_ team to come back, and he's so stubborn that one of these days I'm gonna clobber him in the head with something heavy – and _then_ I'll have a body to hide and nobody to help me!" She pins the doc with an unyielding look. "I _will_ call you. Don't think I won't."

Flavia allows herself a smile, just for a moment but doesn't really get distracted by Felicity's attempt at humour. "Alright. Have you you've talked to him about getting some help?"

"Oh, I have! _Multiple_ times!"

"What have you tried saying to him?"

"The same thing in a thing of different ways, I guess. I just… I don't know how to talk to him about it anymore. I've tried not to push too hard, 'cause _boundaries_. And because…" Felicity takes a breath. This is the heart of the issue, really. "We're talking about him forming a new team, but he looks at me like we're talking about _us_ too, and I just-"

She lets her head drop on her hands, rubs her temples. She's so tired, suddenly.

"He knows we're done. But he doesn't really know how to let go, and there is only so many times I can tell him to move on, before him looking like I'm punching him in the gut starts getting to me, you know."

The doc hums, nodding in understanding.

"You need to remember that there are things you can do and then there are things you can't. You're can't be responsible for his feelings, Felicity." Flavia reminds her gently.

And Felicity knows that. She believes it.

But _still_!

"I snapped at him about it today. Not quite in my Loud Voice, but close."

She thinks about how she'd mentioned Laurel to him, how she told him to do the same thing their friend had done and think about his future for once, and she wants to cringe. It's not like she regrets it. But maybe she shouldn't have been that harsh?

No, she doesn't regret that either. He's being pig-headed and it's going to get him killed out there. She's _right_ in this. She _knows_ she is.

It used to be a lot easier to know when she was right and when she was wrong, before…

"You are angry and you are worried, but you can only take care of yourself. And talk to him to let him know how all this is affecting you. That's all. You cannot make his choices for him."

It was irrational how much that hurt her feelings. They are supposed to take care of each other! That's what teammates do! She just had to do better, that was all.

Except she can't do that either.

"I don't want to let him know ' _how this is affecting me_ '." Felicity says, categorical. "I don't want to _manipulate_ him into getting help! Don't you think I've done enough of that already?"

Flavia sighs.

"We've talked about this, Felicity. What happened between the two of you this summer was not healthy, and you _did_ use his feelings for you against him - and yourself too - but you were in shock and grieving and Oliver is an adult who made his own choices. You have to forgive yourself."

Felicity starest her her canary-yellow nails and says nothing. Flavia takes off her glasses and started cleaning them with the edge of her white sweater.

"Being clear about your feelings on a certain situation will just let him know you care. It's not manipulation and it's not confusing, despite your history – it's something friends do for one another." the doc says as she puts her glasses back on.

Felicity rubs her palms up and down her skirt. "Right. Right, okay, that sounds reasonable. You are good at making things sound reasonable, I like that that about you. I think it's the tone of your voice, personally. Very soothing."

She folds her lips inward. Babbles are not welcome right now.

"Is the idea of talking to him about this making you nervous?"

Felicity smiles. "I talk to Oliver all the time. We don't really do the 'feelings' talks anymore though."

She wonders though, if pretending that the last two years of their lives never happened really had been the right call to make.

"You've gone through some great lengths to both distance yourself from him, which i can understand. But also to try to make up for what happened this summer." Flavia observes carefully.

Felicity shakes her head, trying to shake off the prickle of annoyance she feels at Flavia's dethatched tone. As if she were talking about the weather.

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Are you afraid of making the same mistake again?"

Felicity freezes. "What?"

She can actually hear the guilt alarms in her head and she catalogues all the times she's been in Oliver's space in the past two months. She's pretty sure that she's never touched him once, actually.

Like, 99% sure.

"Are you afraid that it could happen again?" the doc repeats, looking utterly unphased by Felicity's minor stroke.

"No." there is no room for doubt in it. "I'm never putting myself through that again. Ever."

Flavia leans forward, her elbows resting on her shoulders. "Exactly. So there is no need to worry about it. Trust yourself, Felicity."

Felicity feels pinned down by the warm look in the other woman's eyes. That's something else that Felicity likes about her doc: she smiles with her eyes, even when she's not smiling with her lips

"I know it hurts you to think about what happened – _all_ of what happened to you this year. There is a lot that we still need to talk about, i think. But I'm very proud of you for being here now and talking about it. You've been doing so well, Felicity." She straightens again. "I think you've been distancing yourself from your friends a lot lately, and if this continues, you will self isolate again."

Felicity frowns. "No i haven't. I talk to my friends all the time."

"Yes. You've told me. About being cheerful and keeping it light around them, and not sharing your feelings dreading you'd be manipulating them into caring." Flavia pins her with those dark velvet eyes. "That too is a form of distance, Felicity. You're just using a different method, but trust me, it will lead you to the same place."

Felicity wants to argue, but she doesn't really have the means to. It's not like Flavia is wrong.

"I don't think I should talk to John about certain things when he's still overseas." She says carefully.

Flavia nods. "That is reasonable."

"Thea… well maybe we should meet a bit more often. It's not like I've been giving people the cold shoulder. I talk to Curtis a lot. And Oliver… is complicated." She sighs, her head falling into her hands. "I haven't talked to Barry, Cisco and Caitlin in weeks. Not even to Iris."

Felicity sinks against the couch, looks at the ceiling.

"Maybe I haven't really found a balance yet." She admits finally.

"That's okay. It's normal to struggle finding your footing again. More importantly, there's no rush. But I think you should try to think about this a little. Make some time for Thea, see Curtis outside work, make some time to see your other friends from Central City. Try to talk to Oliver openly, since not doing so has caused you stress and worry. Perhaps it won't make a difference, but it might."

"Right."

"Actually, we should make this your homework for this week."

Felicity lets out a quiet chuckle. "Oh, I'm great with homework."

Flavia smiles. "I am aware." She considers Felicity a moment, and then asks. "Would you like to tell me why you look like you haven't slept well in days?"

Felicity would like to. But that would involve lots of other people's secrets she cannot tell. And also a couple of her own.

She smirks instead. "That bad, huh."

Flavia shrugs. "There's only so much concealer can do. Is physical therapy proving to be a strain?"

"No it's not that."

Flavia waits. Sometimes she asks questions. most times, she knows the answer, and Felicity has to bring up the hurts herself.

She's starting to find out that that is the point of this whole thing. It goes against so many of her instincts, both old and new, but she does it anyway.

"Physical therapy is no ride in the park, but Paul is excellent and really good to me. There's pain involved, but as sad as it sounds, i really don't remember a time when it wasn't, so." Felicity takes a breath. "The whole nightmares thing doesn't help any either, though."

There it is.

 _Took you long enough._

"Relating to your injury?"

"No."

"Want to talk to me about it?"

"Not particularly."

It had been all a jumble of her in the bunker and Oliver out there with Digg and Thea. And t first it had felt like a memory, but then John disappeared and Thea got pulled away and Oliver was bleeding and she was suddenly submerged in dark water, not knowing which way to swim for the surface, hurting. And then Laurel's pale face appeared from the depths, angry and sad and dead, and she'd grabbed her wrist and pulled her downwards.

Felicity had woken with a strangled scream, drenched in sweat.

"Laurel's Memorial is next week." She says instead.

"It is. Are you going to go?" the doc asks gently.

Felicity has spent enough time in this room to know that Flavia _knows_ she doesn't want to go. But she has to say it though. That is the trick.

Amazing how it sounds so easy and yet the words don't come.

"Ah... the million dollar question. The answer to which is 'I don't want to' but I know what you're going to say to that." Felicity stops then, because though she sounds exhausted, she also sounds like a smartass.

The doc doesn't seem to notice though. "What am I going to say?"

"That I _should_ go, because feeling like I don't deserve to be there is not actually what I should be feeling and this is not something I should indulge. Doesn't change what I'm feeling though."

"There is no 'what you should be feeling'. What you feel is what you feel. We can and should talk about is _why_ , however."

Felicity feels her anger start to warm her from the inside. Not at Flavia exactly. She's just… _irritated_ because it seems that no matter how much she talks about this, nothing changes. It doesn't get easier, it doesn't make her feel better.

Two months and on some things she hasn't moved an inch.

( _But then again – the last time Flavia tried to go from talking about her break up with Oliver and how she'd handled it, to getting her to talk about why she always felt she would be abandoned, Felicity had almost not come back the next session_.)

"They're celebrating a _hero_." She says heavily, aware that there's an edge to her voice. "Seems a little hypocritical for me to be there, don't you think?"

And she can't even tell her therapist the actual truth of it. That she was an accessory to multiple murders some years ago and still is every once in awhile. That she and Laurel actually talked about this a few times and though they never clashed, they never agreed on it either. That Felicity had always been willing to go the extra mile, while Laurel's top concern had always been not making people into collateral damage.

"I think the memorial is to honor what Laurel Lance stood for, and anyone who wants to should be able to go. Do you _want_ to be there?"

Felicity looks at her hands, picks at her cuticles.

"What I want isn't the point." Felicity snaps. "That's a monument honoring the Black Canary! That woman saved my life! All she wanted was to save this city from itself! She is a symbol of something that is not- that _I_ did not-" she stops, closes her eyes and takes a breath and holds it. "And three… two, one."

Felicity opens her eyes and steadies a very serious look into the darker eyes of her therapist, because this is important.

" _She_ saved lives. _I_ killed thousands. Please tell me the irony is not escaping you."

And she _can_ say that. Flavia knows exactly what she did. A small modification to the truth about the government requiring her expertise against Dahrk's attack this summer had been a very convincing enough story.

"Okay, let's breathe a little." Flavia offers.

Felicity tries to relax again. The softness of the couch is suddenly not doing it for her anymore. It feels like a giant marshmallow trying to swallow her up so she rearranges herself to the edge of it.

 _Ever ready to sprint_ , she reminds herself, and that too makes her wince.

 _God…_

"I don't think I should go, because I know exactly what Laurel would think of someone like me."

"You are making a big assumption there. I can't imagine someone like Miss Lance ever appreciating that."

Felicity stills.

"No, I guess not." She admits unwillingly. She gives the other woman a narrow-eyed look. "You're turning things around on me again."

"I'm merely only applying logic." The doc says simply. "I remember you telling me you're a big fan of it."

"Hilarious." Felicity deadpans.

"I have my moments." Flavia pushes her glasses up her nose. "Focus on what you know, Felicity. Personally, I did not know miss Lance, but I think someone who inspires such loyalty in you must have been loyal to you in turn."

"She was."

"Would the woman you knew condemn you this way?"

Felicity thinks about how laurel loved Sara, how she loved Oliver and herself and how she accepted Nyssa. The fierce friend she made in Diggle and how she used to protect Thea.

They were such a gallery of imperfections. They'd loved each other anyway though.

No, Laurel wouldn't judge her. Laurel would probably have snatched Felicity by the back of her collar months ago and taken her to group therapy sessions for how to deal with grief and guilt and whatever the fuck she'd been feeling back then.

Felicity feels her eyes sting and she knows tears are just a second away. _Laurel, Laurel…_ What's the point? She's not here anymore.

"I don't like thinking about what she would have wanted. Keeps reminding me she can't want anything." Felicity admits.

"No. And there is nothing you can do about that but to accept it."

Felicity sighs and feels exhausted all of a sudden. "Right."

"I'm not going to tell you what you should do, Felicity. You have to make your own choices. But don't let your fears get in the way of you living."

Felicity thinks back to her life of the last few years and a small, humorless smile curves her lips up.

"It's funny, I never thought about it as a fear. But I guess it is. Then again I've been doing things I was afraid to do for years. No reason to stop now, right?"

She reminds herself of that daily. Fear isn't real, not really. Fear and bravery is a choice. She's made it before. It doesn't have to be deserved or earned, for now it just has to be.

"You need to remember that it's not Laurel who wouldn't want you there. It's you thinking those things about yourself."

Felicity passes a hand over her head. "Right. The 'responsibility pie'. I remember. In fact it kinda makes me hungry every time I think about it, but I also feel better sometimes. Oh and I've been practicing that thing you taught me - Imagining the bad stuff going through my mind as if Trump was saying them to me." The smile on her face becomes honest. "I said 'fuck you and your fucking wall' out loud a couple of nights ago so I guess that works."

It had made Oliver look at her like she'd lost it, which had been funny, but he'd assumed it was something to do with her computers and let it rest.

"That's good. I'm glad. I always find that imagining our over-critical inner voice as someone who we generally agree to be an asshole helps keep control of those thoughts."

Secretly, Felicity wonders if she should start imagining Malcolm Merlyn telling her that she didn't deserve things. But that would probably lead her into murderous rages and nobody needed that.

Much easier to get angry at random talking tangerines.

A little alarm chirps from the doc's desk and Felicity knows her time is up. She puts her feet down and back into her shoes again.

Felicity smiles. "Time's up."

"I will see you next week Felicity."

"Yeah you will."

"Don't forget your homework." Flavia reminds her as Felicity gets to the door.

"Never have."

Felicity closes the door as she leaves, the doc's warm chuckle following her on the way out.

o

Maybe she shouldn't be so hasty about it, but delaying is not in her nature, so Felicity agrees to have dinner at Paul and Curtis' place that weekend and calls Caitlin on her way home too, to ask her what she's doing the first weekend of october and if she can call Iris and make a spa-date out of it. Caitlin is ecstatic, and Felicity feels lighter with every step she takes. She makes a lunch date for the next day with Thea too. When Thea tells her that she'd probably be busy and busy and have lunch in her office, Felicity decides to trap herself in by agreeing to that too.

"It's totally fine, I'll bring lunch to you." she says, keeping her tone casual. She offhandedly asks if they might even get Oliver to join them while they were at it.

If Thea things that's weird, she doesn't say.

The next day, Felicity stops for takeout on the way to City Hall, to that Italian place she loves, and picks out the food without examining her choice too closely. As she waits for orders Thea messages her to tell her she might be late, so she and Oliver should start without her and she will catch up the second she's free. Felicity purses her lips, tries to take deep breaths as she waits for the food.

 _It's fine, it's fine, everything's fine_.

Oliver's security team barely flinch when she comes through, even though she's only been here a handful of times. Jason – the youngest of his team that barely looks a day older than 25 even offers to help her with her bags. Felicity smiles at him as she turns him down, but it's sweet.

When she walks in after a short knock, Oliver looks up with a frown that takes just a second longer than normal to relax.

"Hey."

Felicity can _feel_ the way-too-bright-and-awfully-suspicious 'hey' wanting to crawl up her throat, so she bites her lip and awkwardly waves instead.

Oliver gets up, a little hastily as if to make up for his initial hesitation, and takes the bags from her.

"I brought food."

"I can see that." he says as he peeks inside the bags and smiles.

"Thea is-"

"Busy, yes I know. She told me." Felicity takes a deep breath to stop the nervousness from blowing up into fully formed tangent. They set the takeout bags on the coffee table at the corner of the office and start rearranging them.

She looks at him when she hears one of his understated laughs.

"Is the rest of my staff joining us?"

Felicity's brows pull up into an incredulous look. "Have you never seen your sister eat?"

Oliver considers it and then shrugs.

"I kinda hate her for that by the way. It's so unfair that she eats like baby dinosaur and still managed to be a size 2."

"I don't eat like that every day, Smoak." Thea chimes in, making Felicity jump.

"Oh my god, make a noise or something!"

Thea just laughs though as she closes the door behind her just as soundlessly as she opened it and walks to them.

"And I work out."

Felicity's actually a little bit offended by that. "I do too!"

"I train for strength, not fitness." Thea says around a laugh. She peels the jacket off her and flops on the chair, grabs one of the plastic containers and digs in. "At least I used to. Now it's more of a 'I'm too bored to stay indoors' thing." She adds distractedly.

Felicity glances at Oliver, but he's looking at his food, doesn't react at all.

Thea leans over one of the plastic containers and takes a big whiff. "Lasagna. Fancy."

"Yup." Felicity purposefully doesn't look at Oliver. "And salad _and_ garlic bread too."

Thea squints at her. "You _do_ know that trying to bribe the Mayor and his Chief of Staff is illegal, right?"

Felicity tries not to cringe or look too guilty as she takes a seat.

Oliver passes her the cartoon with the spaghetti Bolognese before she asks for it.

"I figured I could stuff the both of you with food to get you vulnerable." She says with a shrug.

"I don't think that works." Oliver chimes in.

"Oh, it does." Felicity says, looking up. "Moments after eating, lots of your blood mass flows to your stomach to help with the digestion, so you're don't think as quickly, or as efficiently. It's why people get sleepy after having lots of food. Totally the best time to ask for favors." She tilts her head as she thinks it over. "I kinda think that's how business lunches and dinners became a thing, by the way."

Thea chuckles. "Which is why nobody ever really _eats_ at business lunches and dinners."

Felicity shudders. "Ugh, tiny food."

"I thought it was because you're eating, your instinct tells you you're safe, so you're more vulnerable to attack because you wouldn't react as quickly."

Felicity gives Oliver a long look and when he notices the silence, he looks up, confused.

"What?"

"Your ' _I hunted my breakfast lunch and dinner for longer than anyone should_ ' is showing." Felicity reminds him.

But Thea snorts. "Please, you're totally saying the same thing. Oliver just said the ' _nature channel'_ version while you said the ' _I wear my fave Chanel pumps at board meetings_ ' version."

Felicity opened her mouth to argue and then closed it. Right. point.

"Not a bad plan, as far as your plans go, through." Thea adds around a mouthful of lasagna. If Felicity hadn't been chewing, she would have gasped in offence.

"I'll have you know my plans are fantastic." She says as gracefully as she can.

"We know." Oliver says calmly, but she knows him too well not to recognize that look on his face. "They usually involved more explosives though."

"Oh fireworks!" Thea adds around a laugh. The sing song voice she uses is probably meant to imitate her and it's the first thing that makes Felicity want to smile since the day started, but she squishes it and raises a single eloquent eyebrow instead as the Queen siblings look at each other from across the coffee table and the food and smile.

"You two are worse than stray cats." Felicity murmurs and stabs her tiny tomato, shoves it in her mouth angrily. She can't really help the laugh but she holds back most of it. "Why do I even bother feeding you?"

"I honestly don't know, but I appreciate it." Thea says and steals one of Felicity's warm buns before so fast Felicity barely notices it.

"As far as ways to corrupt a public officer go, this is pretty tame, though."

Felicity looks between them. Oliver is smiling secretly, but not looking up and Thea seems both bored and annoyed.

"Okay, what?"

"Trust me, you don't wanna know."

Felicity frowns. "That sounds… ominous."

"I mean, drugs and money and subtle offers and dirty deals I get. We were expecting those. But the _rest_ of it…"

Felicity feels the back of her neck starting to prickle.

"What?" She asks, suddenly very serious. Oliver would have told her if there had been credible threats to their safety, right?

She pins him with an unblinking look. _Right_?

"It's fine, Felicity." He has the time to say before his sister cuts in.

"I found a _bra_ on my desk drawer the other week." Thea snaps, and Felicity has to put down the fork and hid her hands beneath the table for a second.

"A bra!" Thea repeats as if she hadn't already made that clear. Felicity can't tell if Thea is offended or if she is amused. Could be both, with Thea. She looks from one Queen to the other, but Oliver is no help since he's very interested in his food, the corner of his lips curved up into a smile that is trying not to show too much.

"...Would you have preferred panties?"

"What? _No_!"

Felicity throws her hands up. "Was it cute?"

Thea rolls her eyes. "Not the point, Smoak. And if they you think that's nothing, wait till I show you the stuff I keep collecting from Oliver's office and his changing room."

Oliver's coughs hard, and for a moment Felicity worries he's choking. His head snaps up and he's probably trying to glare but the effect is ruined by his watery eyes.

" _What_?"

Thea narrows her eyes at him. "Not so funny now, is it?"

" _Thea!_ "

Thea points a fork at him like it's a weapon. "This is a symptom of the fact that people still don't take you seriously Ollie."

Oliver's sighs deeply, leaning back on his chair, and Felicity feels like she really should not be here for this discussion.

"It hurts your ratings – and _reflects_ them, by the way – which means it hurts your power to affect change in the office. It's time you started listening."

"I am!" Oliver insists, and Felicity can see him holding onto his frustration, not wanting to fight. "And I told you that I have something in mind to turn things around."

Thea huffs impatiently. "And you don't think you should clue in you Chief of Staff on it?"

"I _will_. Right after I have lunch with my sister."

Thea holds his eyes and Oliver doesn't blink. Knowing them both, they could be stuck like that forever.

"More rolls anyone?" she asks chirpily, shoving the laminated container between their faces. It's a weak attempt, but after a beat Thea grabs one of the buttered buns and shoves half in her mouth.

"Did the bra fit you at least?"

Thea chokes on her bite of lasagna and glares at her. But her lip curves a little upwards and Felicity calls it a win.

o

Thea sneaks out of cleaning up because she has places to run to and people to meet which she sodus excited enough about that Oliver doesn't feel guilty for now going with her. Felicity picks up the empty cartons and Oliver holds the bag for her to throw them in. She is kinda nervous though. Just a little bit. Not because they're alone; that's not the point, really - they're alone 86% of the time in the lair almost every other night. She's fine with that. She's built herself a nice-looking room that has a splendid view on 'fine' and she has been enjoying each new coat of paint she lays on it.

But she has to _talk_ and this time actually say something.

"I thought about what you said to me."

Felicity tries not to cringe. Right. He beat her to it. Again.

"Which part?"

"About me needing to think about the future too."

Felicity purses her lips. "Oh, that."

The part where they had actually started fighting after so carefully avoiding it so long under all kinds of strain. Of course it was that part.

"Yeah."

"Oliver-"

"I think you're right."

"I just need you to understand that things have already changed and that-" she'd been so prepared for another argument that it takes a moment for his words to register. "Wait what?"

He doesn't say anything though, just gives her one of those _looks_.

"Did you just say I was right?" she wants to smile but holds it. "Are you okay?"

Oliver gives in too. His smile is small and faded, like a shade. He doesn't try as hard as she does. He doesn't try at all, really. She tries very, very hard not to resent him for it, on the says it hurts the worst.

"I looked into your guy."

"Wild Dog?"

Oliver throws the last of the empty cartoons on the paper bag, rolls the top closed and throws it in the bin.

"Rene Ramirez, yes."

Felicity actually takes a step towards him. "And when you say you looked into him-"

He meets her eye. Nods slowly. She'd expected to feel some kind of satisfaction but she is just relieved .

"Wow, yes okay. This is great. It's fantastic news. Does this have to do with the other Mayor-related news you have for Thea?"

He nods, but he's watching her like he can't get a full read on her. "Yes. In a way."

"Okay. This is great. Awesome news."

"Don't get too excited. I'm not letting anyone on the streets yet until I'm sure they won't die on me."

"They won't. And it won't be just you." Felicity reminds him, biting her lip and taking a deep breath that finally reaches her lungs. Yes, this is progress.

She doesn't notice the way he's looking at her because she's so busy being almost giddy about this.

"You were really worried about this."

It's not a question and at this point Felicity's smile drops. "Well, I practically ran out of ways to tell you that, Oliver."

His frown deepens. "You never said-"

"No, I never said that I keep worrying you're going to get into some trouble one night and die _on me_ \- and I will have to listen to it happen without ever being able to even send reinforcements your way. Because I shouldn't have to say that. You know that could happen every night."

"It could happen with a team or not." Oliver reminds her. they both know that all too well.

"And yet, i would rather send you out there with a team, than without. You're the one saying we have to do whatever it takes."

He shifts on his feet. "Yes. I guess- I just didn't want things to change."

He doesn't look at her when he says that. She tries not to take his words personally

Considering how personal everything between them is, it always feels like a losing battle.

"Things already have changed." Felicity reminds him, gently as she can.

The tick on his jaw tells her a longer story than his stony silence. He tries so hard to hold on to what he wants, his idea of things as they should be. As if he can play chicken with the future, daring it to move first, shift, change. Where and how he wants it.

 _Doesn't work that way_.

And she can't let go either, not really, if he refuses to.

"So, can I ask you something?"

Felicity tilts her head. "Go ahead."

When he looks at her that stubbornness is gone, leaving him just a little bit softer. She almost misses the ticking jaw.

"What were you feeling guilty about this time?"

Felicity tenses immediately. "What?"

Her unease makes him uneasy, she can see it.

"I just- I mean, I the past couple of months, that when you feel guilty about things, you tend to bring lots of food around."

Felicity releases a heavy breath. "You noticed that huh?"

And here she thought she was being so subtle. She hadn't even realized it herself. Flavia had pointed out the connection to her.

Oliver shrugs. "I notice things."

Yes, she remembers that.

"I didn't mean to snap at you the other day. I was sort of at the end of my rope."

Oliver shakes his head. "I know that, Felicity. I was the one who kept pulling at the rope."

"Yeah. You were. But we have a solution now, so all is well." She adds with a smile, just a couple of shades brighter than what she feels. She doesn't go for the obvious. He'd notice, after all.

Oliver nods. "Right."

"Bye Oliver."

"I'll see you tonight."

She turns to look at him. "Tonight?"

He's not looking at her. "I don't trust the guy with the goggles. And Evelyn Sharp has potential, but she's too young."

"I know, but she's already out there anyway. We might as well teach her how not to be stupid about it."

"I don't know. Which is why I need to talk to both of them tonight."

Felicity nods, determined now.

"I'll see you then."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7: eventually (the future shows up everywhere)

" _Perhaps many things inside you have been transformed; perhaps somewhere, someplace deep inside your being, you have undergone important changes while you were sad." -_ Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Billy is not hard to like. On the contrary. He's gentle and sweet. Cute in a way that Felicity finds endearing. She likes lots of things about him and she likes _him_ too. Likes how he asks her questions and makes her feel at ease; how he seems to be so enthusiastic about everything that has to do with her; how he smiles and means it, how he accepts things so easily.

 _Easy_. He reminds her what easy is and more often than not, it makes Felicity think about sharing more with him than she usually does.

But at the last moment she always thinks better of it.

It's this that makes her wonder sometimes, what exactly she's doing here. This and the fact that, when she met him again, he's smiled at her as if she never made the rude choice not to call him back after that gala. Even back then she had considered bolting. She put him in the scales, considered how much he would give and how much she would hide and thought him to be nothing more than just another mistake. Another distraction.

But then she steeled up against the doubt and promised herself it wouldn't be. There was a life she wanted and this was part of that. One good thing that did not hurt. He made her feel like it was possible, like there was a chance. So she took it.

It's hard sometimes though, to live again, to build a new normal and be calm, be quiet, try to move on, when three times out of five she's ashamed of her own happiness. She talks about that a lot with Flavia.

No amount of talking to anyone could have prepared her for what happened though. For what it would feel like like to stand in front of Oliver, with him knowing that she was seeing someone else. That she hadn't told him about it this time either and that - worse - it _means_ something now. He left about an hour ago and Felicity still can't believe that the first thing he'd done after learning what was going on, was come to her door, to ask her about it. Talk to her about it.

Some things still feel surreal. Like the words that had come out of her own mouth.

' _No, of course not_ '

No doors for them, no windows. Nothing to jump out of anymore. Not one. She'd bolted all of them shut. Every time he looks at her with those eyes that never quite learned pretense after shedding it for her, Felicity becomes more convinced that they're going to stay that way. And she refuses to drag him around on false hope, just for the sake of nostalgia. Of loneliness of longing. Those are not real.

The _hurt_ was real. Who they are and how that led them here – _that_ is real!

Billy calls her name from the kitchen, asks her how she likes her popcorn – and that voice in the back of her head that keeps fucking nagging, reminding her that voice doesn't sound quite right in her house – that's _not real either!_ Nothing in life was ever built to be fully owned and she has been trying hard to learn that does not always mean loss. That it's not a bad thing. Nothing was ever there to stay but _herself_ , and she's the one making the decisions here.

 _So what_ if it doesn't _feel_ over? That doesn't mean anything!

Flavia wants her to admit that she _feels_ it though. That mind over matter can only go so far – further than that, it's called denial, she says. Felicity grits her teeth and then relents. She accepts it in stride like every other wound on she's had to walk off. She makes herself turn around and face another 'maybe'. _Par for the course_.

Maybe it doesn't _feel_ over, even when it hurts that way. But it _is_. The longing will eventually go away.

Or not.

Those leftover feelings she carries in her heart, with no place to go and no hole to keep them, will wash away. Or they won't. She'll get through it either way. If the flood never recedes, she will have to find a way to breathe underwater. If she never stops feeling like she has half a heart beating somewhere outside her body, she will have to learn how to live with just the other half[1].

But that has no bearing on her reality. Her actions, his actions, whatever was between them. That has ended. The string was cut. No point in dragging it out.

And she's not. She is doing the opposite of dragging it out. She has stepped into a whole new life, just so that she can have steady ground to shake the old one off.

 _But is it real though?_

The kind of questions he can come up with, with all the full impressive weight of his honestly on her ( _such a_ _burden_ ) sometimes still makes Felicity want to throw something at him.

 _What does it matter_ , she'd wanted to yell. _It doesn't change anything!_ But the _look_ on his _face_. That little breath – the one he takes every time something hurts, as if he's trying to brace for it and he's a moment too late.

She hadn't realized how it might sound to him until the words were out of her mouth. How much they might hurt. She'd thought, ' _This will hurt less if I make it obvious. If I make it clear. This will hurt less with no hope_ '.

Hadn't he been the one to tell her that he learned the truth about despair on that island? That sometimes he would stare at the horizon for hours, days, hoping to see his salvation sailing by. That he'd almost died that way. There can be no _true_ despair without hope, he'd said - and though Felicity had never been on that island with him, she had understood what he'd meant immediately then, as she understands it now.

When hope is the knife that turns in the wound, why leave it there? It feels so needlessly cruel and the last thing she wants is to hurt him more. Why not a clean break?

She keeps forgetting they're so different.

Felicity looks at her hands, rubs the tips of her fingers together. They're dry, but she feels like they should not be. She just took a knife out of someone's heart after all. It's something that deserves to leave a mark somewhere.

Where do heartbreakers go, she wonders?

She'd had to wonder before, but not like this. Not like _this_.

It's different when you're the brokenhearted. She'd been that before too. She had been the one who had her life split open, the one who had to collect the pieces. ( _did she ever stop?_ )

Her hand moves to her chest, rubs in small circles as if the ache she feels is real and can be soothed that way.

She hadn't gone anywhere, explained anything. Felicity had mourned on her own because that is how she had wanted to. Because she'd been so exposed that even the air brushing up along her skin had hurt, let alone other people and their well-meaning concern. She hadn't known how to do any of it. So she'd chosen to swallow her hauling, make a whole country out of it, with herself as the sole inhabitant.

But she wouldn't have had to. The whole world would have listened to her pain if she'd wanted to bring it to its doorstep. The broken hearted are always vindicated, because their blood is always staining someone else's hands.

It's so different now, when she's the one doing the breaking. Her heart doesn't feel lost this time. Her heart feels over[2]. There is nowhere to go now even if she wanted to. Displaced is what she is, voiceless.

How can she explain this? What reasons can ever be given for denying love from someone? Who would listen?

Who would want to?

o

No one.

No one would want to. No one has the right to. Every time the heart so much as cracks, blood rushes out to taint the hands of the one who was so careless with their touch. And the truth of it is, if Oliver and Felicity would put their palms side by side, both would be stained red the same way, then and now. And not one soul would be able to tell the difference between them, who cracked what to whom first, and how it broke.

Not one soul should speak of it.

Heartbreakers like the two of them are rare: hearts too close, shattered at the same time, what pieces one lost to be found as splinters in the other's wounds.

Heartbreakers like them go to the same place all other secrets do, and there is only silence there.

o

When they decide to take Evelyn to the team, Felicity asks her about where she lives and if she's okay there. Turns out Evelyn has her own tiny apartment, but it's a bit too close to where the Glades used to be for any seventeen year old girl living on her own - even someone like Evelyn. In the end, she moves in with Felicity. Evelyn protests at first, but not that hard. Which is a relief, because now, Felicity tells herself, she has one more reason to reclaim the loft.

It's like going back to the scene of the crime, and the first three days that she is there alone, Felicity can hardly stand it. But she's decided that she will take the pieces of her life and put them back together, so there is no reason for her to be scared of a building, or the four walls she used to inhabit.

There are memories everywhere though, in every corner. It's almost like exposure therapy, in a way. Flavia gets the brunt of her anxiety about it.

Her first night, she only manages to fall asleep around 4am. She'd spent the whole day cleaning up and arranging her things ( _hiding other things in boxes at the depths of her closet_ ), stalling. She doesn't think about anything when she walks into the master bedroom. She'd thought about taking the guest room instead, but Evelyn told her big windows made her nervous, so Felicity had conceded… And because giving up this room felt a little like cheating and Felicity is not a fan of shortcuts. She purposefully slides in the middle of the bed, and once silence comes, she cannot ignore the pounding of her heart any longer. she's tired, aching. If she only closes her eyes, sleep will come, she knows it.

And it does. The nightmares she'd been dreading though, they don't.

It's worse perhaps, what her mind throws at her. Not nightmares; _memories_. The ones she'd been avoiding all day. Of quiet places, the very bed she fell asleep in; of being close and warm, the whispers between them, his hands, his body and the impression of his weight. She remembers it all so clearly that it takes her a few painful moments after waking up, to remember which is reality and which is not. ( _Sometimes when she dreams of one person and wakes up besides another, it takes her hours to shake off a guilt that has no place being there_.)

But these dreams start coming less often. Somewhere along the way it gets easier and once she notices that, Felicity realizes she passed the test she'd unconsciously set herself up for.

Evie being around helps a lot more than she thought it would. Felicity hadn't had a roommate since she was in college. She's forgotten what it means to be a teenager for longer than that, so in many ways it's a refreshing and jarring experience.

Sometimes Evie talks about her parents. About her life from before, the team, Rene and his need to pull on everyone's pigtails.

"Do you _really_ hate it when he calls you Blondie?"

Felicity rolls her eyes. "No. It's just- someone else used to call me that too. Reminds me of him."

Evie's eyes sparkle. "Oliver?"

Felicity winces. She's still _awful_ about his name. "What? No." Oliver never calls her anything but Felicity.

No wait, that's not true, but-

 _Ugh stop._

"I just thought-"

Felicity shakes her head and sighs, huddles a little more in her blanket. "No, it was a friend of ours. He's not around anymore."

"He dead?" Evelyn asks gracefully around a mouthful of popcorn.

"No. Just not around." Probably on his way up the west coast by now. Last time Thea checked on Roy he was in Chicago, but Felicity doubts he stayed there for long after that.

"Is it the guy that dressed in red before Speedy?" she asks again.

Felicity gives Evelyn a contemplative look.

"What?" Evie asks, frowning. "Do I have something on my face?"

"You should pay attention when Oliver talks about intuition and strategy in the field. You have a good mind for it."

Everly makes a face. "I _always_ pay attention. It's generally how i don't get wrecked."

"Don't be afraid of telling him what you think either. I mean, you have a lot to learn, but that doesn't mean you have to do it passively. The moment when he asks for your input might never come, you know. _You_ have to set the limits."

Evelyn looks skeptical. "And that won't earn me some really rough training or get me benched?"

Felicity shrugs. "It might. But he will respect your opinion."

Evelyn considers it and then nods.

"Have you thought about where you wanna go to college?" Felicity prods. "Cause i could totally help you out with that."

o

A week before Yom Kippur, Felicity reads up on the history and meaning of this one day meant for atonement. For forgiveness. She wants to be prepared, know everything there is to know. It doesn't really help her any, in truth, but at least she understands it better.

She's never been a believer, not in the traditional sense of the word. She believes in other things. In real, living things. And she believes in people and the world- and the fact that the world can go wrong. She believes… differently, perhaps. And she doubts everything.

Sometimes she doesn't understand herself at all. How, for all her doubt, she's always so genuinely surprised when the world fails to live up to her expectations. Fails to be what she believed it to be - what it should be. But maybe that's arrogance and not faith.

Maybes don't count, though.

On the evening of Yom Kippur, she doesn't go to the temple. She puts on her best white dress, says her prayers in private, and calls her mother instead.

They talk for hours, about nothing in particular. Felicity apologizes - because she has apologies to spare to give these days, thousands of them, and so few people to actually receive them. She says 'I'm sorry' for not being a better daughter, for not saying 'I love you' enough, and for not being more patient, more understanding, less distant. She apologizes and is forgiven, and just this once, she accepts it, and gives forgiveness just as easily. It feels like a relief to finally take away someone else's burden, when her mother apologizes for not giving her the life she deserved.

Felicity wipes her tears away.

"I forgive you. Because you need me to. But mom-"

"Felicity-"

"You did the best you could with what you have, and I love you."

Donna sniffs on the other end of the line. Her 'I love you too, baby' is muffled, but Felicity feels it better than she hears it.

"Besides, I'm not doing so badly, am I?"

Donna chuckles. "Bad? Felicity, hon, you are doing wonderfully." Donna sighs deeply, and her next words sound sure and soft in Felicity's ear. "You're my hero."

Felicity closes her eyes, leans back on her couch, bites back the urge to contradict her. "Well, that means you did good too."

"Oh I don't think I can take credit for that baby."

"You should." In this Felicity is sure. "I really think…" She hesitates, and then decides to be honest, because it's worth it. "Every good thing I have is because of you, mom. From you. Where else would I have gotten it?"

"Oh, Felicity." Felicity can hear her mother's smile, that little sigh she makes when she's really happy. "You were born with it, hon. Your father and I have nothing to do with that, thank god." Donna chuckles. "You're better than the both of us taken together and most of the people that came before us too."

"Mom."

"What, it's true! Your bubbe would have said so too."

Felicity rolls her eyes, smiles. "Okay. If you say so."

The next morning, Felicity goes to that little place on the seventh that she knows Oliver loves, gets a batch of his favorite cookies and leaves it on his desk. She does _that_ instead of saying 'I'm sorry', because she has no idea where sorry would begin and where it would end, with Oliver. She kisses Billy and whispers 'I'm sorry' inside her head, for every time she opened her eyes next to him and couldn't help feeling like a cheater. For every time she is not really there, or only halfway. For a love she knows she's capable of but cannot give. She writes to Diggle and tells him she misses and him.

Absolution cannot come from any of them, of course. It does not even come from herself, or whatever else put this soul in her for her body to carry.

She gets no closer to forgiving herself for what she had to do, and looking at Rory in the face brings all the worst of it back. But she does offer him a jar of passion fruit compost, and a confession. The truth.

Rory is the only one that gets the words out loud from her. 'I'm so sorry.' Even if it's not enough. Even if she can't make it better, or change it or fix it. Even if it's not going to be the last mistake she ever makes. She still says it.

In the end, its not forgiveness that Rory offers her. Perhaps that's the secret to getting her to open her eyes to the closest thing to it they are both capable of: acceptance.

She'd spent more than half the year thinking that even if it was possible, there was nobody alive to forgive her. But she was wrong. One kid managed to do for her what Felicity had not been able to do for herself: he offered her an anchor. A way push past what she did, and not just live with it forever. And he was the only person on the planet who could make this kind of offer, and have her accept it without shame.

That night she thinks about the strength it must have taken, the generosity of the kind of heart capable of so much compassion. She doesn't know that she could ever be deserving of it, but that one gift so freely given is the one Felicity cannot find it in her to doubt.

She doesn't know if it's good or bad that Billy looks so unsurprised when she tells him that they need to talk.

He smiles at her with kind eyes and Felicity feels like the worst person on earth. He is sweet and he encourages her and wants to know her and validates her. And it's not his fault that she can't share with him all the parts of herself he wants; needs her to.

They do talk. And it ends in a whisper and a hug to which she holds on to tightly. He kisses her cheek and she lets him go, a warm feeling not quite like disappointment welling up inside her, falling down her cheeks silently. She feels tenderness for him. A hopeless sort of tenderness[2], because she has nothing to give that he could want. And a sadder truth: neither does he.

They were good for each other, at least she hopes, for as long as it lasted. But she doesn't want to use the bodies of other people to build her world anymore, and she doesn't want to use them to keep her warm either.

She had nothing to prove to anyone. Not even to herself.

Felicity wipes her tears away, and doesn't feel either better or worse. For a moment, one short heartbeat, she is afraid of the empty space around her.

But it passes.

o

Out of all the things she's learned this past year, the most difficult ones to face were the reasons behind her fears. The real 'why' of every flinch, every instinct she ever had. To run, to hide. How it was possible that she did some things she did, for reasons so different from the ones she'd thought she had.

Learning how to control it all, how to assert her will over her fears and old hurts, is the only reason that gets Felicity through some of her most exhausting therapy sessions - most exhausting _anything_ she's ever done.

After she goes home, sometimes she sleeps half the day away and eats a cartoon of mint chip. Sometimes she falls asleep on the phone with her mother, hearing stories from the past and trying not to flinch.

Donna drops secrets on her outstretched hands like hot pearls. Things about herself Felicity never knew. Truths blossom in her mind, filling her with understanding.

Sometimes she wonders about whose fault it all is that she is the way she is. If anyone can really be held accountable for the shape a human soul bends. Felicity doesn't think so. But sometimes new angles let you see things from different perspectives.

It doesn't hurt less. But she understands better. Herself, people around her. Her life and the choices that shaped it.

Blame is an orphan, they say. But she wants it outdone completely. Maybe blame does not exist at all. Maybe, she thinks, we use it to make ourselves feel better. To make us feel angrier, hold on to that anger.

There is so much she wants to say to people who are no longer there to listen. To people from whom she inherited so many things.

Her eyes, her face, the shape of her smile… her loneliness and her tears. She talks to her mother about them. The missing- the missing is more difficult. The missing is nameless. And at the same time, it's her father's legacy on her shoulders.

The fear - that is of her own making. Fear that never abandoned her. That _can_ never. Fear like a room inside her heart where she's lived for years. Built on the bones of all her inheritance, with layers from her own life and mistakes. A room high as a cathedral, shelves for lives she could have had, regrets and hopes and dreams she left behind all the truths that she keeps, all the dusty secrets. The room where Alone comes and goes, and holds her hand. Lays beside her like a friend. Where she looks at it in the eye without fear and makes it into what it needs to be, for her to survive.

' _You've been away lately_.' she'd say. ' _Other places. Warm places. But you'll always come back here_.'

And it always sounded so true.

' _Come back and bring your memories. We'll make another shelf for them_.'

And she had.

' _Let's do this together one more time, you and I_ '

And every time, Felicity had followed. Every time.

 _Who made you like this? What are you? What place inside you does all this come from?_

All good questions, now that she knows she should pose them. In truth, the answers do not matter as much as the questions do and learning to ask them.

She finds the answers on accident one night, around the middle of November, after all the newbies have gone home. Not to those questions – just… answers.

She, John and Oliver linger behind. Both of them are worse for wear, mean bruises in various places, but it's nothing they haven't had before. Felicity's back hurts too and the strain travels all the way to her shoulders knotting between them, stiffening her neck, but she just reaches for her glass and takes another sip. She doesn't really know whose idea it was to stay behind for a drink, or if anyone ever said it out loud. It just happened. They sit around the table, glasses in their hands, scotch swirling at the bottom.

And that's how it comes to her. No trumpets or big moments. She and John clink glasses together and Felicity remembers that no matter how difficult things might get, there are still people in her life who vindicate the world. Who help her live just by their presence[1]. And that she is sitting right between two of them.

She blinks, sets the glass down.

Her ability to want things has been sacrificed along the way that got her to this moment, but she does want things sometimes. And it's usually this.

There are some things that don't change, and Felicity starts to slowly believe that they _won't_ change, ever. No matter what comes. She looks at Oliver and this time, the smile they offer each other is not quite as sad. Not quite so soaked in regret.

Reasons change, but this - the friendship that bound their lives together, never will. It is rooted in the soul.

She's coming back to her body so slowly, and relearning this new self again, her life. All her truths. Trying to be the gardener of what was left behind and grow something new in the wrecked places. It always goes easier with company.

The next time Alone comes, she is strong enough to tell it to get the fuck out of her house.

o

There are things that change, as she keeps busy with survival. She accepts that some things need to be lost in order to be recovered, and not to be afraid of their recovery. Every day it's easier to realize a very simple, freeing truth: nothing stays the same for long, not even pain. She's had to dig herself out of the places she burrowed in.

But then there are things that never leave her horizon, no matter how it shifts, how hard the tectonic plates of her quake.

They always come back to each other, somehow, as people come back to their familiar places, looking for what safety used to be and the places they last found it. But all their places look different now, and what waits for them there - shifts.

o

The 24th of December is the first day of Hanukkah, and it's also Christmas Eve, as Digg had reminded her almost a week ago. He'd asked her if she wanted to do anything special. When Felicity said no, he'd smiled and invited her over to his and Lyla's for dinner, after she'd lit her menorah. 'Good company and good food,' he'd said. Felicity smiles back and says yes, despite the small voice in her head telling her it would be best to say no.

The morning of the 24th, Felicity calls her mother and they talk as they both take the menorah out of box it stays for the rest of the year. Felicity avoids generic words like 'fine' and 'okay' as they catch up, the way Flavia encourages her to. She can hear her mom's sadness in her voice sometimes, in the little things. A small sigh at the end of a sentence, a pause that lasts a bit longer than usual.

"Hey mom, when is the earliest you can take a few days off from work?"

"I'm not sure, baby. I'd have to check."

She's going to regret this… but she might not. The chance is worth the risk.

"Would you like to spend New Year's Eve with me?" Her mother's silence on the other end of the line is not he reaction Felicity had been expecting. "Mom?"

" _Yes_! Yes, I would really love that, Felicity."

Felicity closes her eyes, takes a steadying breath. She gets overwhelmed so easily these days. Feelings come and go as they please, because she'd been so aggressively unwelcoming of them before. It's as if this is payback. But at least this time is not that much of a mystery why: her mother's little sniff and the heavy sincerity of her tone is explanation enough.

"Okay then. We can spend the last day of Hanukkah together."

"Oh hopefully I'll be over sooner than that."

"Okay."

"Though maybe it would be best if we order out instead of making a mess of your nice kitchen."

Felicity laughs, tries not to think of the twinge she feels when they both so carefully skirt around their wounds, the way only mother and daughter would know how.

"Yeah, that would be for the best."

That night she whispers the prayers as she lights the first candle, and wonders if this means anything to anyone. But that doesn't matter in the end, because this means something to her.

The last time she lit the menorah she was a different person. A whole lifetime holding another person's hand has passed between then and now. But she made it this far, even through things she never would have thought she would surpass. And for that, she gives thanks to whoever is listening.

o

Diggle's and Lyla's house is loud and cheery when she gets there, happiness alive enough in the air that even Rene cracks a smile or two, every now and then.

He has a cut on his right cheek from the team's last meeting with Prometheus, which he barely escaped alive from. Felicity patched him up herself. Tried to cheer him up reminding him that at least he was still breathing and his eye was undamaged, though his pretty face might look a bit worse for wear than usual. For once, Rene hadn't mouthed off at her, staring at the floor the whole time. Felicity had known where his mind was, despite his stubborn silence. Evie, Curtis and Rory had saved his life and Evie still moved stiffly because Prometheus had almost dislocated her shoulder. But that was what having a team was all about and she needed to figure out a way to make Rene understand that.

She watches as Thea pushes Rene to down on the couch despite his protests and replaces the bandage on his cheek. Rene argues, but it doesn't escape Felicity's notice that he doesn't really push her away.

"Is it bad that I'm lowkey worrying about this?"

Felicity jumps a little, turning to her right, where Oliver is standing. Before she can say anything, he hands her a warm cup of herbal tea and when she scrunches up her nose at it, Oliver points at Paul.

"Doctor's orders." he says softly, and from the other side of the room, Paul winks at her. Felicity makes a face at him, but doesn't say no.

"I have something for you too." He tells her, as he shifts on his feet a little bit.

"You do?"

"Yeah - it's the first day of Hanukkah, so-"

He looks nervous, almost bashful in that way he gets when he really cares and has difficulties containing it, and Felicity feels embarrassment crawling up her neck, heating her cheeks.

She bites her lip. "I didn't get you anything…"

"It's fine, it's not that kind of gift. Wait."

Oliver goes into the kitchen and comes out in a moment and hands her a box wrapped in white paper. She can tell what's inside just from the scent coming off it, halfway through the unwrapping.

"Oooh!"

The latkes inside look about as delicious as she knows they taste. Felicity looks up with a grin so wide she can feel her cheeks aching.

"Still my favorites." She tells him, biting her lip to contain her smile.

The corners of his eyes crinkle, warmth softening his whole face, even his posture loosening. "I know."

Felicity looks away, nods. Of course he does. He did this for her for last year too.

And it's as if someone pulled a rug from right under her feet, making her fall headfirst into that memory. ( _dunks her head under, more like, because she's been swimming in it all day, kicking her feet and keeping her chin up to stay afloat._ ) That morning, before all the violence and the pain, there had been Oliver in their kitchen, in an old T shirt and those sweatpants, trying to make latkes for her like he hadn't been practicing for it all week. And her in her pajamas and fuzzy socks, sneaking her arms around him and her hands down his abs and the front of his sweats, dropping kisses along his shoulders and the back of his neck, calling shivers from him ( _so satisfying still, how she could make him shake_ ), trying to persuade him to make out instead. And there had been his warm chuckle and his fingers tickling her side without turning away from the pan, and her squeal and muffled laughter into the back of his shoulder, because her mother had been asleep upstairs.

( _and his hands on the back of her thighs lifting her up on the counter. His helpless laughter when her trailing fingers went up his ribs and then sneakily into his armpits, tickling him back. The way he did not shiver away but actually held her tighter, pulling her ass right at the edge of the counter, helping her wrap her legs around him. that kiss - deep and slow, hands framing her face the way he did when he was overwhelmed. his sigh, the fine tremble of his fingers as he melted into her…_ )

Felicity looks down, blinking fast. She bites her tingling lips, shakes her head trying to shake the invasive memory out.

She's not looking, or she would have noticed the way he bites his lip, and known they're thinking about the same thing, even now. She does see his right hand curling into a white-knuckled fist however, and then opening again, fingers flexing. She shifts on her feet a little bit, takes just a small step back when she realizes how uncomfortably close they'd been standing.

There are some truths that remain undeniable between them, despite her choices to move past them; but then there are others that simply _overwhelm_. When push comes to shove, no matter how much she tries to earth it, this is the one feeling that keeps blooming flowers even from the grave she buried it in: one year ago from perhaps this very moment, he was her whole word and she was his and they were planning on sharing their lives together.

The thought comes to her, treacherous and honest. _What has changed, really?_ They're not together anymore, but sometimes that feels like it's just geography. Like the two of them in any room will always need a third chair for all the things they have left behind that keep following them, half blind, bruised and limping.

But that passes too, because she remembers they've both changed from those people.

And that geography - flimsy as it is - is all she has. If a little pretending that they are not so cracked, is what keeps them going and helps them mend, then what's the harm in it?

So Felicity takes one of the latkes between her fingers, says thank you and proceeds to eat it. Pretends not to notice the way Oliver shakes himself out whatever was in his head, and finds the strength to smile back at her.

She is so grateful for his small kindnesses.

"How's your back?"

Felicity straightens her shoulders a bit, shrugs - and the tea sloshes a little over the rim of the mug she's holding with her other hand as she eats.

"You should sit down." he tells her then, around a smile. He knows that she tends to spill whatever she's holding when she's eating something, but she also knows that this is not about the tea or any potential spillage on Lyla's rug.

Her back aches, and he can tell, because he misses nothing and this is his way of telling her she should give herself a break. She bites back the automatic urge to say I'm fine, and pops the last bit of the fried dough in her mouth, instead. Then she takes the box from him, sits on one of the couch and props it on her lap, and pats the space next to hers in invitation with her free hand.

Oliver sits down gingerly, still eying his sister and Rene who are talking quietly at the corner of the room, both of them looking too serious for the festive occasion.

"Relax." She tells him softly, poking his leg with her free hand to get him to stop staring.

Oliver winces, giving her this stupid betrayed look that she counters with an unimpressed eyebrow-raise.

He smiles and looks away, but it melts off his face a moment later.

"I just don't want her hurt." he says softly, looking at the sweating beer bottle in his hands.

"I'm sure Thea has already thought about that. She has excellent survival instincts."

He looks unimpressed though.

"Oliver, if she thinks she's ready to try again, then you have to accept that she's already made her choice."

Oliver turns to her then. They've both gotten better at the whole talking thing, once they stopped having three conversations at once, two of them silent, hidden behind words and between the lines.

He nods and takes a careful sip of his beer.

She thinks about the week from hell they just had, and leans forward a bit, closer to him, but not too close to make him uncomfortable.

"How are you doing?"

Oliver looks at his hands, passes a thumb down the surface of the bottle as he mulls it over.

"I'm trying to figure out if there will ever come a time when my past will just-"

"Stay in the past?" Felicity says gently. Oliver's sigh is exhausted and the way his shoulders curl inwards makes her want to reach for him.

Felicity leans to the side, pressing her shoulder against his arm for a moment.

"We know who he could be, we know why he might be after you - and therefore _us_." which scares and makes him protective, Felicity knows that. But he needs to deal with that because his team is not going anywhere. And if Felicity is being honest, he's surprised her at every turn by accepting that. Not easily, and never without worry - his forehead will start to wrinkle early from all the frowning he does. But it's a start.

"We know his possible targets and I'm _this_ close to figuring out who his sources are."

And all of it because this time, unlike any other time before it when they'd faced something this potentially dangerous, Oliver had unloaded on them every bit of information he'd thought relevant almost immediately. Even when it included his past in Russia and the enemies he made there.

There are things he'd told her that made her pause and reconsider him. Reconsider how hard he must have fought to leave behind all his dark places, and why he can still smell the sharp tang of the blood every time he so much as glances behind himself.

Why he avoids even flinching when he can feel those memories creeping up on him.

She'd known this before. She'd known the names, the definitions: Post traumatic stress disorder. Triggers, avoidance, flashbacks, numbing, nightmares. He lived through it so she'd lived through it too.

She understands from a different perspective now.

After knowing what it feels like to drown under an ocean of shame and still be willing to swallow it whole instead of sharing it with anyone, Felicity can understand his need for hiding things away a little differently now. Not better, just differently – she's felt the bite herself. She knows how deep it goes. The fear that makes you do it, the doubt. She still doesn't agree it's the best thing to do, and probably never will - maybe especially now. At its base it seems as unfair to her now as it had when this unfairness had made her tell Rory about Havenrock immediately. But she _can_ understand how it would make sense to him.

There are some things that never leave us, ghosts that always haunt us, even when all there's left is bones.

"We're going to find a way to beat this back." Felicity tells him. "Whatever it takes."

He purses his lips, angry and resigned at the same time. "That's not really what I'm worried about. I should be, but I'm not."

Felicity follow his eyes to where Evelyn is playing with John Jr., to Curtis and Paul helping Lyla in the kitchen and Digg, who recruited Thea and Rene to set up the table. Her heart thuds in her chest, fear gnawing. Yeah, she knows what he's worried about.

"Yeah." she sighs. "Whatever happens, we'll have better chances if we stick together."

From the corner of her eye she sees Oliver nod stiffly.

"I know that."

Felicity bites her lip. A nagging voice inside her head that is particularly good or kind, tells her to doubt him, that she should and it would be smarter. But she knows it would also be unfair. He's been trying so hard to keep everyone in the loop. Not to isolate himself and leave the rest of them floundering, not knowing what to do. And if the last year has taught her anything is that, though there are things people will never be able to change about themselves, the fact that they struggle against that inevitability has got to count for something. It has to _mean_ something.

"We've been doing okay, you know." she says, drawing his attention. Felicity smiles and nudges her shoulder against his arm. "Your approval rating as Mayor is stellar. You passed two major crime bills, and the housing bill you have been fighting for, for months now. SCPD is getting its shit together. Criminal activity is down-"

"That's always a bad sign this time of the year, you know it."

Felicity elbows him lightly in the side. He exaggerates a wince and purses his lips, and Felicity wants to shove him off the couch completely.

"Take a win, Oliver. Just- let it sink in for a second. We're doing good. Everyone you care about is safe and relatively happy and about to get knocked out on really good food. Enjoy it. We've done everything we can to prepare for whatever comes next and we'll deal with it when it gets here."

He takes a deep breath and it's as if he's recalibrating his brain to it. "Right. Okay."

When he looks back at her, his eyes are soft and warm. She knows that small, almost sleepy smile he gives her. It's a struggle not to look away and it kinda hurts just under her fourth left rib, but she doesn't flinch.

"Still as good at talking myself out of a victory as ever."

Felicity looks at the rip of the red mug in her hands, the brown tea swirling inside.

"Yeah, well- that's about 56% of the reason why i wanted backup on the team. More people to argue my point."

She hears him chuckle quietly. "A whole 56% huh? That's more than half of your reasoning. I'll take it."

Felicity smiles without looking up from her tea. She takes a breath, arches her back to relieve the aching.

"Want me to bring you your purse?" Oliver asks, sounding as serious as ever. She can practically _hear_ the frown in his voice.

She thinks about saying no, that she'll get up and get it herself. But then again, what would be the point of that? After all, one of the things she apparently needed to learn was accepting help even when she can do things herself.

"And a glass of water, please."

She doesn't even try to tell herself that she doesn't know why he smiles when he gets up.

o

Rene shrugs out of his shirt and Evie presses a cold compress gently against his bruised shoulder. He hisses at the contact.

"Sorry." she murmurs.

"S'fine." he turns his head to glance at her from the corner of his eye. "How's your leg?"

"Not bad. I think it'll just bruise a little." She turns to Rory with a smile. "Thanks for the save, by the way."

"Anytime. Just try not to get into direct line of fire without any kind of warning, please. It kinda tends to scare the hell out of me." Rory reminds her as he passes a hand through his hair. The mask is awesome but it always gives him helmet-head hair and Evie has the time of her life teasing him for it.

Evie chuckles. "I'll do my best."

"Here, try this." Curtis says as he hands her a closed tin jar. She opens it, sniffs at the paste inside and gags.

"Oh my god!" she says, face scrunched up and eyes almost watering. "Are you trying to knock me out?"

"Trust me, it works. It's a paste from herbs that Oliver found on the island he was marooned at."

"Oh, the Disney magic herbs!" Evie says, looking at it again, though this time keeping it as far from her nose as her arm will allow.

Rory smiles. "Is that what Felicity calls them?"

Evelyn answers with a grin and moves closer to the lights so she can take a better look of what's inside.

Rene rolls his eyes at her. "It's not gonna start sparkling, kid."

Evie smirks at him.

"You never know." She closes in on him and puts some on his shoulder, massages it in gently. Rory takes a few steps back from them.

"Smells like puke." he says, making a face.

Rene groans. "Tell me about it."

"Babies."

"Shut up, midget."

"Make me, navy man." Evelyn says without missing a beat.

Rene just sighs and shakes his head at her antics. "Brat."

Evelyn bites her lip and flicks his ear, making Rene twitch and both the other men and Evie laugh. He swing his good arms behind himself awkwardly trying to slap her leg, but it's half-hearted at best and Ev dodges him easily.

Rene looks over his shoulder. "I _will_ kick your ass kid, I don't care that you're a girl."

"That's cause you know I'd kick _yours_ first."

Curtis laughs and Rene gives him a narrowed-eyed look.

"You wish." He grumbles.

"I _know_."

Curtis steps between them. "Alright, how about we take it easy with the ribbing tonight." he says calmly. "We're all already wearing our daily dose of bruises."

Rene grumbles, but leaves it at that. As she walks away though, Evelyn wiggles her eyebrows at him and the next thing Rory knows, is Rene throwing his boot across the room. It misses and just makes Evelyn laugh harder. Rene shakes his head at her again, put-upon and annoyed, but Rory can tell he's biting back a smile of his own, no matter how hard he pretends.

Rory turns away from them.

He is learning to love his new team for who they are, but sometimes they do things that can't help but remind him of the family he lost. He was never as much of a shit to Gigi as Rene is to Evelyn, but it's in the same vein. Sometimes when Evie laughs in that way of hers, loud and full and unselfconscious, all Rory can think of is his kid cousin.

He tries not to dwell on that, though.

Most days, he even succeeds.

"Hey, did you guys notice anything weird with Felicity tonight?" Evie asks from behind the screen where she usually changes out of her suit.

Rory tenses and instinctively looks at Rene, who pretends to be extremely busy unlacing his other boot.

"Nope." Rene answers, sounding utterly laid back and oblivious.

 _Nice lying skills you got there_.

From behind the partition, Evelyn hums.

Curtis frowns, linking his arms over his chest. "Why are you asking?"

"I don't know. She just seemed… off, somehow." Evie says, thoughtful.

Curtis' face clouds over. "She was probably in pain and didn't tell anybody. Paul is gonna kick my ass - he told me to watch out for that." he sighs heavily.

"Kick _her_ ass, more like." Evie says around a small chuckle.

"As much as I hate to say it, Queen was right. She shouldn't have come out with us tonight." Rene mumbles, and Rory knows he means more than just the discomfort the action physically put her on her body.

He remembers Felicity's unfocused wide-eyed look when the gunshot started; how she'd frozen for a moment, her hands shaking, not breathing.

Rene calls it her 'thousand-yard stare'. Or that is what he had called it that one time they had gotten just a little bit drunk on the bottle of Scotch they swiped from Digg's stash. According to Rene, Felicity is either new to it, or a bad liar, 'cause she's not half as good at hiding it as Queen and Digg are.

Rory thinks it's a little bit of both.

"The security system could not be hacked remotely and there was no way i could do it on my own, you know that." Curtis admits with a sigh. "By the time I would have cracked it, we probably would have tripped every alarm in the place. She had to be there."

"Yeah, which is unfortunate, cause Queen is at least ten times more ball-breaking when Blondie's in the field."

Rory and Curtis open their mouths to argue in Oliver's defense almost reflexively, but then they both purse their lips closed again.

Sometimes the truth is undeniable.

"He's just being careful." Curtis reminds him. "You know how he is about safety, and Felicity is not even like us. She can't fight back the way we can out there."

"And she almost died more than once. That tends to make people nervous." Ev ads from behind the screen, her voice muffled, probably because she was pulling her shirt over her head.

Rene throws his jacket in his locker. "Yeah, and she still chooses to go out again. Girl makes her own choices. Queen needs to learn to deal with that."

"Well, I for one am glad she was with us." Evie says as she walks into the common area again, pulling her hair into a careless bun on top of her head. She smiles at Curtis. "It's amazing, the stuff you and Felicity can do. It's totally like magic to me.

Curtis pushes his glasses higher on his nose. "It's not magic - I could teach you computer stuff, it's not that hard to learn."

Evie laughs. "I doubt that, but I'm not opposed to it. Did I get all the paint off?" she asks, turning her face so that Curtis can look at her sides and ears.

"Yeah. Oh wait, you got some here." He takes a cloth and some solution and dabs gently at the shell of her ear.

"How did that even _get_ there?" She murmurs, annoyed.

"Trust me, it's a mystery. This paint is magic all by itself."

Evie hums, bites her lip. She looks at Rene, who is still nursing his shoulder and icing his forearm, and at Rory who is still taking off the rest of his rags.

"You know, I think it's because of Oliver."

Curtis frowns at her, confused. "The paint?"

"No! Felicity. They've been so- I dunno, _strange_ around each other lately. There's like, this whole vibe of _something_ going on. It's weird."

Nobody says anything. To Rory, his and Rene's silence sounds highly suspicious, because he is so very aware they're hiding something, but Evie hasn't noticed yet, to his relief. It's freaky the way she figures things out sometimes.

"Come on, I can't be the one noticing this." she pushes, and then gives Curtis a small 'thank you' after he's done helping her clean up. She takes a clean cloth from the pile and helps him get out the last remains of his mask in turn, but she doesn't abandon her line of thought.

"All I've noticed is that Queen is an asshole." Rene shrugs.

Evelyn gives him an unimpressed stare. "As defending champion, are you worried?"

"Hilarious, midget."

Evelyn smiles back, all teeth. "I've always thought so. No, I think they're kinda close to making up."

And her giddy tone isn't subtle either.

"I mean, think about it: she's not dating anyone anymore and neither is he and they talk all the freaking time now - and _flirt_! I _totally_ caught them flirting the other day! They were circling around each other smiling but I'm pretty sure that's how they flirt, 'cause John was looking at them funny."

Rory can't believe his ears. "How do you even notice these things."

Evelyn just shrugs. "I dunno. I pay attention?"

"And we should care, because?" Rene drawls, sounding five different shades of bored and getting started on a couple of two new ones of annoyed.

"It would be really sweet." Evelyn defends. "They're cute together."

Rory smiles at her, and Rene snorts.

"I really wouldn't advise playing matchmaker with those two, Ev." Curtis tells her slowly, uncharacteristically serious.

Evelyn stops cleaning the paint out of his hairline and looks at him in the eye.

"There's some really painful history there. If they're gonna figure it out, it's gonna have to be by themselves."

It's not a rebuttal - Curtis is too gentle for that - but for a moment Evelyn feels like it is. There are times when her teasing, or her overplaying the silliness her age allows her to get away with, is the only reprieve they get all day and everyone is grateful to her for it. And then there are times when they don't really get what she means at all.

"I wasn't going to." Ev explains carefully and then tries to smile, shrugging. "I just like seeing people happy, you know."

"Yeah, I've noticed that." Curtis nods, his hand coming up to squeeze her forearm.

Evelyn feels the words bubble up her throat. They're out before she even realizes.

"I think she dreams about him sometimes. But I don't think it's the good kind of dreaming, you know."

Curtis' face falls.

Evelyn bites her lip and looks down to her hands. She immediately regrets saying anything. It feels like she's betraying some kind of secret. But she doesn't have any other friends she can talk to about things like this, and some secrets get too heavy to carry alone, sometimes.

And besides, Felicity is kinda hard to get to know, but she's not hard to like, and Evelyn cares about her a lot, as it happens.

"Those are called nightmares, kid."

"I know what they're called, Rene." Even huffs, shakes her head. "I shouldn't have said anything."

"Relax, Ev. It's not some state secret." Rory says as he puts on his jacket. "There's not a single person in this bunker who doesn't get the occasional night terror."

They all look at each other and there's a moment where the collective weight of all the loss crammed in such a tiny room might squash them.

But then Rene gets on his feet with a wince and chuckles.

"I have honestly never been in the company of weirder people. And that's saying something."

The mood lightens immediately, as they all decide to be good to each other and shrug the moment off.

"Sorry to break it to you, but you're not the first person to call me weird. Not even the fifth." Curtis frowns, thinking about it. "Actually, I've been weird my whole life."

"Somehow that doesn't surprise me." Rory teases.

Evelyn loops her arm around Curtis' middle and pulls him close. "Don't worry, Curtis. We love you anyway."

"Felicity is her own brand of human, just like you." Rory continues, nodding at Curtis. "Thea Queen is that good, old-fashioned kind of scary. We have Lance, who is about 15 shades of burnout. And then there's Oliver, who is weird in really _weird_ ways, though."

Rene shakes his head at that thought. "Nah, man. I understand Queen's way just fine."

Curtis tilts his head in Rene's direction. "You do?"

"I didn't say I liked it."

"Have you noticed how he always counts us every time he sees us after he get separated?" because Evelyn has noticed it, and it reassures her as much as it freaks her out.

"And that thing he does with food!" Curtis adds, snapping his fingers when he remembers. He always has the best snacks and he'll bring them around if he notices any one of them has spent too long not eating anything.

Rory laughs. "I remember that one because last time, he threw an energy bar at Rene's face."

"Asshole." Rene grumbles.

"What, he was right!" Evelyn defends immediately, and Curtis nods behind her. "You _should_ have been able to catch it. What if it really _is_ a knife next time?"

Rene straightens and looks at them all hard in the face. "He threw a energy-bar at my head."

Evelyn shrugs. "Point still stands." And then her smile widens. "I bet Thea would have caught it."

Instead of slapping her arm, Rene pokes Ev on the side, when he knows she's ticklish, making her squeal.

"Shut your face."

"And think about it - that's a total upgrade." Curtis adds, grinning. "Better an energy bar, and an arrow."

Rene flips him the bird.

"I think the _point_ of all this is that John Diggle is the only sane man on this team." Curtis clarifies.

"Thank god for that." Rory mumbles.

Rene grumbles for a couple of moments longer, but then his mood seems to lighten. "Hey, remember how Queen told us never to wake him up if he's sleeping?"

Curtis frowns. "Yeah, I remember. What's so funny about that?" He'd told them not to even get close to him at all. Just leave the room.

"You guys realize that's why Blondie bought all the nerf guns, right?"

Rory sputters. "What?"

It just makes Rene laugh harder. "Oh yeah. I woke up one night with two of those darts stuck to my forehead and Determined Barbie staring at me asking me if I wanted some water and shit."

Rory's eyes narrow on him. "Don't do that, man. She was being kind to you, that's not something to be mocked."

Rene's good humour evaporates. "I wasn't mocking, hero. Back off."

Rory and Rene just stare at each other for a moment. Then Rory nods and then lets it go. Which is a new one since Rory is not typically the first of them to start any shit with anyone, but he doesn't take any shit from anyone either. There seems to be un understanding between them though.

"Didn't know you'd grown enough as a person not to be annoyed about the whole nerf gun thing." Curtis points out carefully. Rene shoves him as hard as he can with his good arm but it just makes Curtis laugh.

"I was and still am." But he looks also mightily amused by it too. "I'd give every penny I have to see her pull that with Queen though."

Rory and Rene keep talking but Evelyn doesn't notice because Curtis puts his arm around Evelyn's shoulders and pulls her close.

"You know, Felicity is gonna be working late at Palmer Tech tonight." Curtis tells her. Evelyn looks up at him and his smile. "How do you feel about spaghetti and steamed vegetables?"

Evelyn smiles back at him. "I feel really good about them."

"Hey, what about the two of us? Are we not cute enough for you, Holt?"

"I'm a happily married man, ramirez. And you're not my type… I think."

Rene gasps puts a hand over his chest. "I'm hurt."

"You'll survive it." Rory tells him flatly, just as they walk into the main area of the bunker. "After all, you survived the last 345 times Thea Queen shot you down. Can't be any worse."

"He must be building immunity." Evelyn laughs.

"Yeah. To your bullshit."

Felicity walks by them and up the platform without looking up from her tablet. "That's your problem, Rene. You just have to be nicer."

"No, Blondie, I'm pretty sure my problem is that I don't give a shit."

Felicity considers it for half a second and then shrugs. "Goodnight guys. I'll see you at home, Ev."

"I'm going over at Curtis' for dinner."

Felicity looks up, considers a moment then nods. "I could pick you up when I come back, if I don't stay too late."

"Text me and let me know." Ev decides. "If you actually end up sleeping in the office I'll just take a cab."

Felicity huffs. "It happened _one_ time and I don't get to live it down. Kids these days."

"Bye Felicity. Goodnight Oliver."

Oliver looked up from the arrowhead he's sharpening into a fine blade. "Goodnight."

Rory and Rene exchange a look, and then flank both Evelyn and Curtis.

"So, how about that dinner invitation, Curtis?"

o

Felicity volunteers her apartment for the New Year's Eve dinner Evelyn suggested, as long as they are all okay that her mother is going to be there. She feels Donna Smoak warrants a thorough warning. They all seem fine with it, but then Evie hastily adds that anyone who wants to come over and take care of the cooking is welcome to do so.

Felicity glares but Evie shrugs entirely unapologetically.

"Felicity, I love you, but I really don't want to deal with the fire department on New Year's Eve."

Rory is a sweetheart and that's why he bites his lips and doesn't smile at all. Curtis can't really help himself so Felicity doesn't begrudge him the hidden laughter turned into a cough and Dingle's Smirk of Hidden Satisfaction is just too old to argue with. But Rene outright laughs, the little shit.

However, it's at Oliver's head that she throws the pen she'd been holding - which he catches, because of course he does - because _Oliver_ is the only one that knows it wouldn't be the first time she and the firefighters would have had a really embarrassing encounter on account of burned kitchenware.

"I know what you're thinking." she hisses at him, which only makes him smile wider.

"I didn't say anything." Oliver defends but Felicity just narrows her eyes at him. Diggle chuckles from his seat by the weapons table and Felicity glares a little at his profile.

"You're laughing at me."

"I'm pretty sure _I_ was the one laughing, Blondie." Rene reminds her. "Still am, actually."

Felicity doesn't look away from Oliver. "You're laughing at me - on the inside."

Oliver purses his lips. "I'm not."

"Come on, you can't be that bad." Rory says amicably as he shrugs into his jacket.

Evie coughs and Oliver just raises his eyebrows and looks down.

"Don't you two have better things to do than stand there being all judgy?" Felicity snaps at them, but not really because honestly, this is a very rare calm moment and she's probably enjoying as much as the rest of them are, even if it's at her expense, just a lil bit.

( _she can joke around now. She doesn't snap, she doesn't get hurt at random. She can smile. It feels nice. She enjoys herself and there isn't even that much guilt._

 _She'd forgotten so much, she feels bereft for a moment, when she remembers this is what actual happiness feels like_ )

Rene walks over to her and throws his arm around her shoulders. "I'll make you a deal, Blondie."

Felicity knows him well enough by now to understand that him reaching for her - or anyone - without any prompting is a major sign of affection from the guy, so she goes with it. After all, he did save her from a spray of bullets not so long ago.

He and Rory ended up being witnesses to some really not fun moments of her trying to crawl out of the memory of another cold December night, with shards of glass under her cheek and her side hurting as if her wound had been reopened. She'd found an anchor when Rene grabbed her hand so tightly that his fingernails almost broke the skin of her palm.

 _'Felicity! Hey_ Blondie _, come on snap out of it. Breathe_.'

He'd stayed with her till the gunfight ended and both him and Rory did her the favor of pretending they didn't know better, when she said she was fine, after. She owed them both for that, because that kind of vulnerability still made her supremely uncomfortable, even though she knew it shouldn't.

And she owed them for the cup of herbal tea Rory made for her later that day. And for the warm pile of blankets and popcorn Evie had waiting for her at home. And the little bracelet that Curtis left on her desk a week later, with a little button that, once pressed, would send a gentle buzz on her wrist and an ground her in the moment.

( _she gets one of those for Oliver too. Hands it to him one night, just before they leave to their separate homes. The way he's looked at her when he said thank you, the words heavy with feeling, still intrudes in her thoughts every now and then_.)

Felicity feels her heart expand in her chest all of a sudden at the unexpected clarity of the affection she feels for all the friends she's made. She relaxes into Rene's side, smiles.

"I'm listening."

" _I_ will help you cook." Rene declares.

"Me too!" Rory adds and Curtis raises his hand, nodding happily.

Rene looks back at Oliver and Evie with a smirk, all challenge. "And if this thing does in fact turn out to be the best meal you suckers have ever had-"

"Then there will be no more teasing about my cooking skill of any kind. No bringing up fire alarms or any other form of kitchen related incidents _ever_." Felicity says quickly, crossing her arms over her chest too and staring back at Oliver and Evelyn unflinchingly.

"I think that's kinda pushing it, Blondie."

"No it's not. I stand very firm on this point."

Rene mutters something that sounds a lot like 'freaking perfectionist' but she lets it slide, mostly because it's true.

Evie shrugs. "Fine, you're on. What happens if you lose though? Cause I can think of a couple of things."

She nudges Oliver with a light elbow to his side - because she's become pretty confident lately that she's his favorite ( _and she's not entirely wrong_ ), but Oliver is staring a bit too intently at her and Rene to really play into it that well.

"Fine." Oliver says then. "If it's you lose though, we're moving up the schedule on that trip to the Island."

"What?!" Evelyn gasps, but Rene sighs.

"I got no problem with that."

Evelyn inches away from Oliver. "I think I might move to the other team for this one."

"Oh, no. I don't think so." Rory stops her immediately. "You've wanted to go to that Island ever since Oliver mentioned it."

Evelyn gives him a wide-eyed look of surprise that is a little too deliberately innocent to be entirely honest, and Felicity knows it. But she has to admit, the kid is good.

"Are you telling me you're afraid I might sabotage you?"

"I know it." Rory says.

"It's a pretty even 100% chance that you'd try, Ev."

" _Curtis_!"

Felicity folds her lips back to keep her smile from showing at the way Ev stomps her foot. She's seen that girl slam grown men into the ground with these same feet she uses to stop like a ten year old kid.

It's rather hilarious.

"What, it's true." Curtis defends.

Evelyn glares at them. "No faith."

"'Cause you're a little shit." Rene adds and then grunts cause Felicity elbows him in the ribs.

"Alright!" Oliver doesn't even raise his voice, they all turn to him. "So are we on?"

"We are." Felicity says decidedly.

There's a small edge to Oliver's smile, but his eyes glint with laughter. "Alright. Good luck." He says as he walks away towards the training area.

Rene sighs and turns to Felicity. "So, how bad are you at this?"

Felicity bites her lip.

o

Rene, Rory and Curtis find out how bad she is at anything kitchen-related later that day, when they try to help Felicity make an omelet to gouge her skills.

She burns the eggs twice and the third time, the pan goes too.

" _Blondie_!"

Felicity almost drops her phone at the loud call and turns a glare at Rene… which turns into a guilty look.

"What?"

He takes the spatula from her and turns the omelet. Then reaches around her and tries to grab her phone but she holds it away from him.

"You're not taking my phone."

"Yes I am!"

"No you're _not_."

"Yes I- God, what are you, five?"

"No!" though she probably sounds like it.

In the end, Rory, who was standing behind her, taps her shoulder. Felicity tucks her phone between her breasts and turns to him.

"May i please have your phone?" he asks her, nicely.

Ugh.

"No?"

Rory holds out his hand and felicity glares at him. "Fine!"

She plops it in his open hand and Rory puts it high on the cabinets where she can't reach it.

"Hey!"

"No, don't 'hey' him!" Rene snaps. "This is why you're so bad at cooking. You get distracted and forget there's an open fire under an egg in front of you."

Felicity growls and leans her hip against the counter, crosses her hands in front of herself so tightly that she seems she won't uncross them ever.

"I don't have to watch the thing, for it to fry."

Rene looks at her like he can't believe he's actually hearing this. "No you need to watch it so that it doesn't _burn_."

"Even if literally _everything_ else is more interesting." Curtis adds with a smile from where he is chopping the vegetables.

Felicity rolls her eyes. "Like watching paint dry."

"Not the point! You need to watch the food, okay." Rene takes a breath and then regroups. "Okay, look, I'm going to show you my gramma's recipes, okay. Now she was a really nice woman who could kick some serious ass, so I need you to pay her the respect of at least listening."

"Besides, imagine the face Oliver will make when you actually make something edible." Rory adds, and then winces at her glare. "I mean, think about it as a challenge."

Felicity relents. "Right, I like those."

She just doesn't like not being good at anything even when it's on first try.

"And chemistry. I bet you were good at it in school." Rory adds.

"Look, it doesnt have to be perfect, Blondie. Come on. We'll guide you through it. And no phone this time."

"But-"

"No!" all three of them say together, and Felicity finally throws her hands up.

"Fine. Fine, let's do this thing."

o

She doesn't burn the house down, for starters. That alone is an improvement.

And despite Felicity's expectations, it's… kinda fun. Which is not because she's cooking, she realises but just because she is spending time with other people who are having fun. Especially when Evie comes and joins them anyway. Her and Donna have the time of their lives talking about all the girly things her mother always wanted to talk to Felicity about, when she'd been a kid. Felicity is surprised at herself, when she realizes she doesn't resent this as much as she thought she would.

By the time Digg and Lyla show up, she has all the first courses lined up and – true, she did not cook any of them on her own - but that is not the point, as she firmly maintains when Oliver points this out.

"It was a group effort." She says instead.

"Did you spend the whole time on your phone?"

" _No_! My phone was confiscated."

Oliver gives her a disbelieving look that turns into a frown. He steps towards her, closer then she expected, and pokes his head into the kitchen.

"Do you guys all have all your fingers and toes?"

Felicity slaps his arm hard and he moves away from her, even managing to add a wince to his laughter, as the chorus of various 'yes-s' almost drowns him out.

"I'm just making sure my team is okay." Oliver explains, around his smile, eyes sparkling with silent laughter.

Felicity turns around and for a moment she misses her long ponytail, because she used to love smacking him with it in the face when he got cheeky. She marches into the kitchen, picks up one of the salad dishes and walks out, bumping her shoulder on his arm.

Oliver keeps smiling and helps her set up the table - something that turns out to be a lot more complicated that it sounds because apparently, Rene has a system and not even Donna Smoak can dissuade him from it.

It should worry her that her mother and the newbies get along like a house on fire and for a moment she shares a worried look with Oliver before she realizes what she is doing and finds a stupid reason to dive back into the kitchen, just to catch hold of her thoughts again.

She is so surprised to find that nothing is really unraveling. She's fine. She's enjoying herself, and it _feels_ like it. She's having a good time with friends, laughing more than she has in a long time. She's giddy with it.

So she stands there, hands pressed against the cold granite of her kitchen isle for a long moment, trying to understand herself. Trying to understand what is wrong.

And then she realises - nothing is wrong. She's fine, she's happy, and that is not a lie. What is _missing_ is the heaviness of the guilt that comes with it. That weight is not there right now, and that is a change because Felicity had gotten used to it so much she feels strange without it.

She blinks fast against her stinging eyes, looks at the ceiling and takes a deep breath. Picks up another one of the dishes and the rest of the cutlery and walks out to everyone everyone spread around in the loft and Evie trying to wrestle champagne flutes out of Rene's hands without breaking them, in the corner.

"Hey."

Felicity looks to her right and sees Oliver standing there, just far enough not to intrude into her space, just close enough to speak to her without being heard.

"Yeah?"

His brows pull into a small frown and for a moment, she can see a glimpse of the worry he's trying to hide.

"Are you okay?"

Felicity's lips tick up at the corners. "You know, I'm not allowed to use that word."

He blinks, confused and Felicity reaches for his hand. She does it slowly, telegraphing her intention to give him time to move, if he wants to. What she feels is his fingers reaching for hers halfway and she has to blink fast again.

She gives him the best smile she can, the most honest. Nods so that she doesn't have to use the words she'd used so many times before to lie to him. The worry falls away from his eyes, replaced by something gentler, something that softens his whole face.

"You look happy."

He says it like he can hardly believe it, and for a moment, all Felicity wants is to hug him tight enough to make him feel just how much his being in her life means to her. Make up somehow, for putting this worry into him.

So she tells him the truth. "I think I am, yeah."

o

Peace, happiness, calm, love. None of these things are a place or a person. They're a string of moment, as frail as a string of pearls. They break all the time. But nobody ever said you can't pick them up again.

She does. She digs herself out of all her empty places, out of the grave and the sea and the ashes. She does it every day. There are days when she is better at it, and days when she is a little less so. She doesn't think she can fill up all the depths she fell into, and pretend they never existed. They are part of her now. Something she is capable of. Her world changed, her sense of self did too.

But she knows those depths now. They are there to stay, but that doesn't mean she has to live in them. So she leaves the graves and carries the earth of it beneath her fingernails.

Sometimes, when it gets harder, when she cannot understand how she could be happy and sad, exhausted but jittery, why sleep won't come, she wishes she could get rid of all of it, Forget it. Scrub herself raw, be who she was before she stared into this great abyss.

Bit she's not. She's not that person, nor the person that the abyss stared back into. She is both. She is the one that crawled out of it. Because nothing is ever lost in this universe. Everything transforms. Everything becomes again.

Physics always wins.

* * *

[1] Caitlyn Siehl

[2] Inspired by Salma Daeera's poem ' A REMEMBRANCE TO HEARTBREAKERS'

[2] Marina Tsvetaeva, from Earthly Signs: Moscow Diaries

[3] Albert Camus, The First Man.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8: the second secret

 _"I'll tell you a riddle:  
You're waiting for a train. A train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you don't know for sure.  
Yet it doesn't matter.  
Now, tell me why."_

 _"Because we'll be together."_

-'Inception', Christopher Nolan

It's a sneaky kind of missing that persists. One that she cannot evict, because it's too tightly woven into whatever makes the insides of her. A longing too subtle for words, for barriers; resistant to time and erosion.

Weeks go by, a month, three. She masters the art of living every day as if it's its own battle. Learns how to fill the empty places left behind with new parts of herself. Most days, she doesn't even think about it.

But then something happens ( _the way he looks down sometimes just before he smiles and she knows exactly what he's thinking, that nervous tick of his fingers, the way he tilts his head or touches her shoulder, or offers his hand when they're climbing down the stairs. All his thoughtless gestures of affection_ ) and she has to start missing him all over again.

Everything changes. Everything… _everything_ changes. But that still hasn't.

Felicity can't really put a finger on when she started to change her mind. On when reconciliation became possible, even as a thought in her head.

But it happens.

It happens.

She only notices somewhere around march, when she precipitates to City Hall after every major news outlet in the city starts blaring about how Prometheus attacked the Mayor and possibly killed him.

Digg drives like a bat out of hell and Felicity is grateful for it, for once in her life. The moment they get downtown they have to stop and keep doing on foot, because the roads are blocked.

"He's still not answering his phone." She says, her breath coming heavy.

"Thea isn't either." Digg tells her as he moves to her side, so that he can keep people from bumping into her as they power walk their way through downtown.

"I swear, the second I see them, I'm going to strangle them both." Felicity declares and in that moment, she means it.

"We have to find them first."

"Did you call-"

"They're on their way too." Digg says, already knowing what she's asking about. "Rory should already be there, he lives closest."

Felicity winces when a particular step lands a little too heavily and the impact travels up her leg all the way to her spine. She wishes she could chuck her heels and just run, at this point, the thousand tiny needles pricking their way up her stomach telling her she's not going to get there soon enough.

The moment she gets to the steps of City Hall, she's stopped by the police and it's just because of Quentin that she makes it through the cordoned area. They lead her inside and she takes the stairs as quickly as she can, rushing down the hallway.  
The damage around her is unmistakable, as if a storm swept through.

There are a thousand things she could be wondering about – if he fought, if he's hurt, if they'll have to come up with some lie to explain whatever Oliver did to survive this attack. She could be thinking about that, and the tail end of those thoughts does manage to brush up against her, but mostly she's just worried that one of best her friends and the man that she loved and lost and hurt and forgave and loves - is dead like everyone says and-

And that's where the trail of thoughts stops. It just stops.

But then Felicity turns a corner - and there he is.

Felicity takes him in from head to toe, searching for damage, for wounds. He's moving well enough that she knows immediately he's not hurt. His sleeves are rolled up and there's blood along his shoulder, a splatter of it on the right side of his chest, but there's not tension in his frame that would tell her he's in pain. His eyes are a little pinched at the corners, but that's normal when he's nervous.

The second he spots her, he turns, opens his mouth to say something, maybe. He can't get a word out before Felicity walks straight to him. Oliver opens his arms for her to step into them as if it's the easiest thing in the world.

And that's how it happens. She's at the end of the corridor one moment, and with her arms around him the next. She ate up the distance between them as if it was made of the regrets she had managed to accumulate between hearing about the attack and seeing him standing there.

'I'm okay' he keeps saying, one arm banded around her middle, the other soothing a line from her neck, down her spine to the middle of her back. And he is. So is Thea and most of his staff too. And between holding on to him and pulling back to look at him in the eye, she knows that this is it. That for all her fear of coming so close to all the things she wants most she can almost taste them, almost have them, falling just a little too short of them … this is it.

And she is afraid, but the wanting has never stopped. The hurting hasn't stopped either. Her every bone aches with the spidery webs of where they shattered before… but she wants.  
Reconciliation has been possible for a while now, maybe it never stopped, but this is when she chooses it.

o

She's spent so much time thinking anything could be possible if she worked for it hard enough, believed it deep enough. So it's a bit of a dissonant experience for Felicity to find out that sometimes in life, disbelief in yourself is needed too.

That it takes real strength not to dread being terrified by her own lack of strength[1]. That sometimes things have to be allowed to happen, and that she has to sit still as they crash through the room. The darkest night and the brightest day can both walk into her life, holding each other by the hand, and sometimes they will chose to enter through the cracks loneliness made in her. All her accumulated sorrow, all the ghosts, the loss the pain – she needs them. All their moaning and aching, their weight is part of her, even if it hurts.

 _I'm not afraid anymore, of being afraid._

There are certain kinds of fear that maybe have to live there, in the spaces between the body and the soul. Fear of right, of wrong, of wanting too much and not wanting enough. Of too many words and the deadly fear of the right words. They can all grow, thrive. That's alright. She has more. She _is_ more.

Indispensable is sometimes being sleeplessly delirious, failing, falling[2], reassembling yourself from where the parts of you rolled under every piece of furniture. It's part of living. Even when you look and find pieces missing, that is alright too. New ones will grow.

It must happen, all this. It is brave to realize it can happen more than once. It is brave to let yourself tremble with uncertainty even because of the smallest idea, the barest movement. To _let_ yourself be afraid. Not to ignore it, but embrace it, in utter recognition of what lies beneath it. And act despite it, not to forget the fear was ever there, but to get to the other side.

 _I will be brave. I will._

 _I am_.

o

They had stepped away from each other months ago, with a silent promise to go each their own way, so they could find a steadier ground than the other could provide. Find out who they were, without each other. No avoidance, no hiding or running.

To Oliver, it had seemed like an exercise in futility. He hadn't wanted to find out anything; he'd known what he wanted from the moment he lost it, it hadn't been a mystery to him.

But Felicity had been different.

In retrospect, they had been different sides of the same coin: he'd clung to the past, Felicity had wanted to run as far away from it as possible. It's not as surprising, how badly they'd fucked it all up.

After, they'd relegated each other to the fringes of their lives, to give the other space.

It had been painful sometimes, watching her struggle without being able to hold her through it. Watching her choosing to stumble rather than take his hand. It had hurt him to realize that, for a while there, Felicity hadn't even known how to let him be a friend anymore. After the summer they'd had and the guilt that still lingered in him about it, Oliver hadn't been sure he knew how to be a friend to her either. He didn't think it was possible, to love her from a distance or more quietly, differently.

But they'd gotten there eventually. One step at a time, because they'd had to. Because she had forced him to imagine what his life would look like without her in it. Forced herself to do the same. ( _some things never change: she never makes anyone pay any kind of price she isn't willing to pay herself first_.)

He had lived that life for a while. A life of possibility, where the one thing he'd wanted the most was out of reach. That was an old and well trodden path for him, ever since the Gambit capsized. Ever since he'd learned what it really _meant_ to really want.

But usually between him and what he wanted stood death or other impossibilities. Having her determination stand there instead felt… different. Flimsier and more real at the same time, than any obstacle before it.

It hadn't been as bad. Especially after they started talking again, about their day, the team, their lives. After they learned how to be close without it feeling like salt on an open wound.

It had certainly been possible, to live like that.

He'd been on this journey before, after all - finding out who this person he was could become, walking down untrodden roads to get there, to that person. But the first time, Oliver hadn't really cared where those paths took him, as long as she was there with him. He'd built his whole existence around that.

And this was the only thing that gave him pause. Because maybe Felicity was right. Maybe that hadn't been the best idea. They had both crumbled so hard when that foundation had failed. The best thing he's learned after losing her, the only good thing, is to stop looking outside himself for salvation. People fail all the time. It's why they're people. Asking them to be homes, lights, salvation, is too much to ask of anyone. It's unfair. The most people can do is help. You have to pull your own weight, though.

Being unable to drag Felicity out of her own abyss with the sheer strength of his love and his will had taught him that.

So he'd learned yet another way to live. Learned to want other things, fill his life with what was not indispensable, and learn to be content. Become his own center, while still letting other people help. He'd made it happen, because he had help: six other people waiting to catch him if he fell. People she encouraged him to let in and to trust. Felicity had been right about that too: he really could do anything, when he wanted to.

But he _didn't,_ though. She didn't seem to understand that. He _doesn't want_ to give anything up and especially not her. He is that kind of person now: unafraid of daring to want everything.

Which is why it feels like coming home when, after a long journey on their own, they meet again. Different people in the same place, wanting the same thing again. Everything has changed. But that is okay.

The beginning of happiness feels like elation, some say. A brush of a thought, feather soft against your face ' _it's going to be okay_ '. Oliver agrees.

o

It starts so slowly he doesn't even realize it it first.

Once she manages to get Wayne enterprises to collaborate for the mass production of Curtis' MicroChip, Felicity storms into his office and tells him with a huge smile on her face and eyes alight, that she is going to find a way to reopen the old Queen Consolidated factory in the Glades, and make the chip there instead of moving production anywhere else. When their eyes meet over the table in his office, Oliver knows she is perfectly aware of what that means to him.

They end up spending more time together as Palmer Tech and the public offices of the city collaborate to make everything possible. And if Oliver starts to drag the meetings out a bit, so that she can stay a little longer once his staff and the PT representatives they coordinate with have gone home, Felicity doesn't seem to mind. Sometimes she calls him around midnight to ask him random question on city regulations and after he explains, he tells her to look up and see the time. More often than not, he hears her little 'oh' of surprise and he knows that she's been lost in work so much that she probably hasn't even eaten anything. And if there are times when their phone conversations stray from production plans, taxes, state legislation and all the jobs that would be made available, neither is bothered by it.

The day the announcement is made public, she invites the whole team to the press conference. She seems so happy up there as she takes questions that Oliver feels his own heart expand with the mirroring feeling.

But once the negotiations end, so do their long meetings and Oliver realizes he's started needing her all over again when a whole week passes and he doesn't meet her out of the bunker once. One night he goes back to his apartment and finds himself wanting to be under the hood again, just because the silence of the four walls he still can't really manage to call home is so oppressive.

He turns off the TV and takes a chance, calls her. She picks up on second ring and starts talking to him about the dangers of making popcorn even with a microwave.

Oliver frowns. "What happened? Are you okay?"

She chuckles, and the warmth of it dances along the back of his neck.

"I'm fine. I can handle myself against some popcorns."

In his experience that is not entirely true and when she tells him that she starts rambling off about 'anyone can have accidents you can't hold that against me.'

Oliver leans back on the couch with a smile. "If you say so."

They talk for more than an hour. She teases him; he makes her laugh. She tells him to turn the TV channel 4 and they end up watching a rerun of 'I love Lucy' together.

"Is this okay?" Oliver asks when conversation lulls, voice changing with the weight of everything behind the question. He can hear the soft puffs of her breath from the other side. Laying down in the couch as he is, it's easy to imagine she's laying right next to him.

She takes a moment to answer, but he believes her when she does.

"Yeah. Yes, it is."

It doesn't really feel like the first step of something, until _she_ calls _him_ and just starts rambling off about the Palmer Tech board and how there is a little girl that is going to be operated on next month. He gets the gist of it no matter how fast she's talking and as he hears the smile in her voice, he smiles too.

They celebrate with burgers and shakes that night. He doesn't have to tell her that he was working late; she probably knows the moment she sees him walking into the Big Belly still in his suit, sleeves rolled up and jacket over his arm. Felicity just smiles thought, looking frazzled, flushed and happy.

It doesn't occur to Oliver until she bounces a little on the balls of her feet, biting her lip before she says goodnight, that she invited him out and they had dinner together, just them, and - counting the kiss she leaves behind on his cheek that still feels warm hours after she's left - it's almost like a date.

The next night in the lair, she's almost a buzz, all nervous and jittery movements of her hands when she speaks, quick glances his way when she thinks he's not looking, biting her lip when she looks away. And that's how Oliver knows he's not imagining anything.

They test boundaries carefully: a hand that brushes her arm when he passes by even when he's not trying to offer comfort. Hers that lingers on his shoulder when she patches him up. Standing just a little too close behind her station, leaning in when he doesn't have to. Her head turning to him, breath her warm fanning against his throat.

Playfulness returns.

They both know exactly what they're doing, it's right there in the look they share when their eyes catch and hold - just a beat a beat too long, enough for awareness to flutter between them.

The day he makes her laugh, _really_ laugh, loudly and straight from the belly, with that little snort she does when she can't catch her breath, Oliver is so happy he freaks his staff out because he keeps randomly smiling all day.

o

The first time he knows she means it, is when she talks about regret.

It's summer, June is just creeping in and Felicity looks beautiful enough for the sight of her to hurt, with her bright pink lips and a lemon-yellow sundress that puts a smile on his face almost against his will. They're sitting in an ice cream parlor with tiny tables and her bare forearm brushes against his every now and again. She doesn't seem to notice, but he can see the goosebumps rising along her arms.

They're talking about the renovations to the bunker - she wants to order some new equipment and make a few changes to his suit. Oliver is trying to argue that he likes the suit fine the way it is, but some shorter strands of her hair that have escaped from her ponytail and curled around her ear, keep distracting him. They tickle her cheek and she keeps distractedly brushing the bothersome curls aside, but they come back. And all he wants is to lean over, pass a hand across the side of her face and push the bothersome curls behind her ear once and for all. ( _frame her face with both hands, pull her close and kiss her long enough and deep enough for her to forget all about everything that is not them_ )

The image dazes him for a moment, heat rolling up from low in his belly to the surface of his skin like a wave.

"Oliver?"

He blinks, meeting her eyes immediately. "Yes."

She rolls her eyes at him but sobers up almost immediately. "Are you okay? is it something in here? Do you want to leave?"

She looks around as if whatever disrupted his attention is not sitting right in front of him. But he knows what she's looking for.

"I'm fine. It's just- You've got-"

Felicity pushes her glasses up her nose, brushes her lips with the napkin. "What?"

He thinks about telling her. And then, before the thought has even fully formed in his head, he finds himself reaching over and pushes the errant curl behind her ear, just like he imagined doing. His thumb brushes the shell of her ear, her piercing warm from the heat of her skin.

His eyes jump to her face and he sees her exhale slowly, cheeks flushing, her chest blooming with color too.

Oliver gulps and retracts his hand, brushing the tips of his fingers together, until they stop tingling.

The silence that falls between them sounds heavy, the sounds of the other patrons around them suddenly invading their space.

He feels so self consciousness creeping up his neck like a rope.

"Felicity, I'm-"

She reaches out and wraps her fingers around his hand. It's a surprise, but the look on her face a little more so. The tips of her four fingers press at the base of his thumb and she pulls his hand to her face, presses her cheek against his palm.

The moment stops and stretches on, like honey pulled from a jar, and Oliver is the fly trapped in it.

She blinks, blue eyes bright and shiny behind her glasses. Her smile is shaky, uncertain. She gulps heavily, takes a steadying breath.

"Is _this_ okay?"

It's how real her uncertainty is that makes him move so fast. He's out of his chair in a moment and pulls her to her feet the next. Felicity walks into his hug all on her own, though. And she lets him hold her there the way she used to, before: for as long as he wants, completely oblivious and uncaring of anything but them, with her arms banded around his ribs, locked together at the small of his back.

She's biting her lip when they pull apart, her lashes wet, what's left of her tears stuck on his T-shirt. He brushes the stray little hairs off her forehead and settles his hands on her shoulders and down her arms, till they find her hands. Felicity closes her eyes. She looks sad when she opens them again, but happy too, and she smiles anyway.

o

She's been asking herself the question lately. ' _Can I be forgiven for all that I've done to get here?_ '

It's a question she is familiar with. Oliver used to ask it all the time in so many different ways. Sometimes the answer was no. Other it was different.

She'd always told him yes. Yes! Strong and stubborn, out of love and compassion and anger for all who ever hurt him and took him to those dark places and left him there. There is no shame in surviving.

Now the compassion that had come to her so easily for him, and John, and Thea and Rene, Rory, Evie… it stutters when her name is the one mentioned.

' _I don't know. I don't know… Please._ '

o

They walk together to the bunker, close enough that their arms brush every now and then. And when they get there, she sits in front of him, looks at him with her hands curled in her lap, her shoulders curled into herself - and starts talking about old wounds.

Brings it up all on her own, almost like an invitation.

No. No 'almost-s'. It _is_ one. Oliver takes it.

She tells him about the guilt first. About the things he knew and couldn't make her say. Tells him about regret. Months of it, piled high. Looks at him in the eye and tells him she's sorry for all the ways she had let herself take him down to where her pain lived, just so she could have some company.

Oliver thinks back to the way she used to trace his collarbones, drawing secret patterns up and down his chest, nails red enough to make him want to kiss the tips of her fingers. One uninterrupted line, pulling meaning only she knew, from where it did not live. Palms spread open on his chest as she looked at him without speaking; a gesture that belonged wholly to her, and nobody else.

They had redefined love and loss for each other, the way they had redefined everything else. There had been pain too, but Oliver couldn't bring himself to regret touching her, any part of her - even the writhing hurt that almost swallowed him whole - without cutting off his own hands.

So he takes her hand in his, and gives her one last truth he knows.

In some other world, there is a couple just like them and there were no mistakes. He is not so damaged, not as much a coward, more honest. And she is less afraid, more open, without burdens of hard decisions and the pain they brought her. In another world, they are happy and never hurt each other and their lives are all about their where to live and where to vacation and who bored they are with their lives in the suburbs.

"But we're not those people." he says with a smile, his thumbs running along her knuckles, hands tucked warm in his. Felicity smiles back, eyes shining. "I don't want to be those people, Felicity. I want _us_."

He wants her, Felicity Smoak. The person sitting in front of him and wants her the way she is, with all her perfections and her imperfections. He wants to be himself, whoever that is, with her again and go with her wherever that takes them.

And fuck their mistakes and the ways they couldn't be worthy of the love they built, but bless this place it all brought them to, where they can say they know the best of each other and worst of each other and, after all they've been through, still chose both.

o

It's not even two hours later that they're both all over the internet.

Turns out, the Mayor and the owner of Palmer Tech can't really go incognito, especially when they are so wrapped into their little worlds that they have no idea if anyone else is around. Or an entirely ice cream parlour, as it happens.

Felicity has a headache over it. Thea for some reason, finds it hilarious.

o

She'd gone back to herself out of defiance, out of despair, because there was nothing else[3]. She goes back to _him_ , because she choses to.

It's a living, breathing want that she gives in to and within that choice she finds the strength to let herself be afraid, and then move past it. The moment she does, he's right there with her and Felicity is hit with the full force of his every honest emotion, as if all he'd been gearing up for this for a while and had just been waiting for her to be ready for him.

And it's so _unexpected_ that she doesn't know how to understand it at first.

She thinks perhaps that might be because, despite everything she's worked through and how hard she's tried to deal with this person she is now, she still hasn't found a way to forgive herself for some things, especially about Oliver. And then one one night she ends up sitting on her bed crying silently to herself, because following the origin of that disbelief in him had lead her into some strange places of her own. Places that made no sense.

She had _wanted_ him to stay away. Needed him to. They had both needed to find their own standing.

But she also hadn't, had she?

She hadn't wanted to accept any kind of fight for what was left of them, a year ago. Giving up on him had been a loss, and having him respect her will to do so had been loss, too. It is an entirely happy thing that he wants to be with her now… but she still keeps doubting he means it. As if he'll wake up one day and realize the mistake and leave. Already she is gearing up for it.

Same mistake again. As predictable as the simplest line of code.

The secret of loss is not in the past, or what someone else did to her. It's right there, in her surprise at being wanted, when all truth points to something different.

It sets Felicity's nerves on fire with anger. It's insulting that after all the shit they've been through, after all the pain, _this_ is what it comes down to again. Her own mind, a system she can't hack into. She doesn't understand the firewalls, let alone what's behind them.

She calls Flavia when the tears have dried and the anger is starting to simmer, wanting - _demanding_ \- to know: ' _why am I like this. how can I fucking fix it? I want a solution and I want it now.'_

Flavia is as infuriating as ever. No quick fixes for the human mind, she says. No hacking.

' _We will work on it, together_.' she says. ' _In the meantime…_ '

Talking. That's always Flavia's prescription. At this point, Felicity just goes with it. She would have, anyway. She wants them to work this time, and if the price for that is walking into openness without her skin on, so be it. She'll pay it. She is afraid, but so what? Disbelief in yourself is indispensable too sometimes, right?

Besides, though there are things that are hard to say, but entirely good to say.

 _'I miss you.'_

 _'I'm sorry.'_

 _'I'm not doing that great today.'_

She tries to let the words roll out of her mouth with the same ease she held them in. It makes her feel like she's digging herself out of old wounds; a flower or a little tuft of grass, growing through the cracks in the concrete. It's the most heroic she has ever felt.

Oliver invites her over for dinner at his apartment one night. he's nervous but smiling, and Felicity says yes. 'Yes' just once, sure.

She watches him move in the kitchen that night, and realizes that for all that they have changed, there is a kind of safety to be found in the fact that some things haven't. What is familiar between them feels like home to her.

She is not the first person he has loved and he is not the first person she thought she would spend the rest of her life with. Yet here they are, again. It is strange sometimes to think they might have been as happy with other people, before they found what kind of love they could hold between each other.

They have both lost so much and been scarred by it, they have both chosen to keep going despite it. And whatever love they found between the two of them, it was a surprise. An unannounced guest. Love came for them in the middle of the night, from the most unexpected place.

And it came again, when they had given up on love.

That night, their conversation is all about them, and what they want.

Felicity sits close to him on the couch, her legs pulled up under her, with a glass of wine in her hand - one that he keeps straightening when it goes askew as she talks, fingers brushing against hers. ( _same as she keeps touching his hand, his arm; as he keeps touching her ankles, a myriad of little touches_ )

What she wants… She moves a little closer on the couch. He moves his leg a fraction and closes that last inch, pressing the side of his thigh against her knees. It's hard to say, but not impossible.

 _If we're gonna heal, let it be glorious **[4]**._

"I want you." She says before she loses the nerve. Her voice still shakes a little. "I want to be with you. If you want to be with me."

Oliver's exhale is harsh, almost as if he'd been holding his breath.

"Felicity-"

"I want all of you though." and it sounds almost like a warning. The hand that he'd been reaching for her with falls in his lap and she takes it, places it in hers. "I want you to be a part of my life and I want to be a part of yours."

She wants him, when he is brilliant and as bright as a summer day and she wants him when he collapses. She wants to be the lap he folds on, she wants his to be the arms that wrap promises around her. She wants his flaws, they taste the best. They taste like reality.

 _Fears… let it go…_

She blinks fast. "I don't want to wake up ten years from now and find out that I've been living with only the pieces of you you wanted to show me."

She wants to be safe and she wants to build that with him.

"Felicity, I'm sorry."

"You're forgiven." She says without missing a beat. "And I want you to stop apologizing. It's been in the past for a long time, Oliver."

"I will, if you will."

Felicity laughs, lets her head fall forward to where his arm is draped along the back of the couch, her forehead pressing to the inside of his elbow.

The kiss he leaves on top of her head is so light she barely feels it.

What she wants. It's so easy, in the end. She wants all his tattered pages, all his words, especially the breathless ones. She wants the lips they came from[5].

Felicity turns her head, pressing her cheek against his arm instead and looking up into his eyes.

"I want… I want you." and then, in a whisper. "I want to have a normal with you. And I want to do things so wild with you, I don't know how to say them[6]. That's what I want."

The way his fingers curl around the nape of her neck, is all the signal she needs to raise her head.

He kisses her once, softly, and then she links her arms around his neck, presses close, with all the accumulated longing of months of missing him loosening along the seams of her skin and opens her mouth over his, drawing him in. Softness remains, but she crawls into his lap and softness stretches on to something hotter and just as gentle, and so inviting that there between them, it becomes a sanctuary.

No doors or windows for them; they keep each other open instead, in truth and in hope, which was never a door, but the sense that, despite everything, a door existed and would be found sometime into the future.

And it could be that this moment had been waiting for her to happen to it for a while, just one inch beneath the understated current of the two of them. It could be that god long ago drew a circle in the sand around the exact spot where they are sitting. That she was never not coming here. That this was never not happening[7]. But whether fate is real or not, Felicity believes in what she knows. And she knows, in this moment and with the perfect clarity of passion, that she is the sum total of everything that went before her, of all she have been seen done, of everything done-to-her. She is everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by hers. She is anything that happens after she's gone which would not have happened if she had not come[8].

And it all amounts to the same thing: them together now, whether by choice or fate.

They kiss until they're both warm with it, with touches and softness that feels like healing. Until she curls into him, arms around him, pressing in. He slows them down, hands framing her face, linking through her hair, sliding down her back, her thighs; until she melts into his chest like butter on a hot scone.

They kiss and press promises between them like flowers between the pages of a book. Until they're breathless and giddy with happiness, smiling against each other's lips, her hands going over his head, fingers through his hair as he holds her close, the weight of their history just behind them, reminding them how precious this is.

After, they breathe as they hold each other close, and Felicity hugs him tight, cheek pressed against his. She lays her head on her favorite spot just against his drumming heart.

Just when she's about to sleep, lulled there by his hands running up and down her back, she jerks awake again.

"What?"

She sits up and rubs her lids with the tips of her fingers. Oliver hands her her glasses without a word and she smiles at him.

"I can't stay over." She tells him, just as his hand settles on her thigh just below where the hem of her flowery skirt has ridden up, thumb drawing little circles of persuasion on her outer thigh.

His hand stops.

"Okay."

"I mean, I _want_ to." She reiterates, for clarity's sake. "I miss sleeping with you."

Oliver's smile is slow, eyes sparkling with amusement.

Felicity rolls her eyes, pokes his chest. "You know what I mean."

"I do."

"And yes, _that_ too. But it's not what I meant."

"This conversation is derailing to interesting places."

Felicity huffs. "Doesn't it ever. I have no change of clothes. And I'm not going to work tomorrow in my 'casual date' dress."

He rests his head against the back of the couch and looks at her through his lashes, his smile widening. "Casual date?"

She considers him. His heavy lids and the lazy smile on his face.

"I do keep a change of clothes in the lair."

Oliver just hums. Felicity sighs and lays back down against him, his arms coming around around her and holding her tighter than the relaxed look on his face would have precluded. One hand passes over her hair, smoothing the curls out of her face and takes off her glasses gently, before she can do it herself.

"I hate getting up too early though."

The way his chuckle rumbles in his chest makes her nuzzle her cheek a little against his T Shirt.

"Think of the pancakes." he reminds her.

"Hm, pancakes." she's missed those two. All the small enchanting gestures. a thousand ways to say 'i love you'. "Yes, good thought."

"Great thought."

" _Happy_ thought."

Oliver flips them, lays her on the couch, arm banded around her middle. Felicity yelps, surprised by the sudden change of angle, before she laughs.

"Outstanding, really." He murmurs into her neck and she laughs some more.

"Euphoric." She whispers, breathless just for a second as she makes room for him to settle his weight between her thighs.

Oliver laughs where he'd been pressing nibbling kisses just below her ear. One arm sneaks between her back and the couch and he pulls her into a strong hug.

"Well, I don't know. Pancakes are good, but not _that_ good."

Felicity shrugs. "You underestimate your pancake-making skills"

"No, I don't think so."

"I'm pretty sure there are things I can do better."

His hand moves down and squeezes her thigh, and Felicity has to bite her lip because she's so happy she wants to laugh but she also wants to keep this going.

"Huh. I dunno. I'm going to need evidence of that." she says, trying to sound nonplussed.

"Right." Oliver nods, and kisses his way up from her chest, all the way to the very hem of her dipping neckline to her lips. "Scientific method is the one that works best, right."

"I'm a big fan of science."

His laughter is a bit helpless and that more than anything makes her smile so much.

o

The next morning, Felicity has to rush to get to work on time, because the good morning kiss turned to a good morning making-out-in-the-bed, and pancakes somehow turned to making out on top of the kitchen counter, all the while the room witnessing them, echoing with memories that kept getting fainter as the present takes their place.

They use the side exit of the bunker and walk out into the street again. Oliver walks with her all the way to the doors of Palmer Tech. They decide to meet for lunch.

She stands there, the moment after, and realizes she doesn't know how to say goodbye, or even see you later. That her first instinct is to step into him and tilt her head up.

She gives in, and sees the surprise in his eyes even though it lasts only a blink before tenderness softens them. She leans in close and then waits. Waits for him to make the choice here too, even as her fingers curl on the inside of his elbow, rumpling his shirt. Oliver lets a breath go and his body slopes towards hers, his warm breath brushing her lips as he tilts towards her. His hand cups her cheek, warm, just as his lips brush up against hers, softly. His hand at the small of her back encourages her to come closer, until they're chest to chest and toe to toe. One little tilt, and he closes the space between them as if it was never there.

And it's sweet that they are still somewhat surprised by the love they have found in each other, but they both know it will be sweeter once the surprise leaves. Slowly, they know they will pull each other back together again the way they split themselves in half[9]. He will write letters with his lips and address them to all the insecure parts of her soul, one kiss at a time. She will help the man in doubt disappear. They will make each other believe it when they say 'I love you' and say it so often that the very last unconvinced fiber of their souls will forget what it is to doubt.

There is a curse that will be broken, exactly this way. With the two of them pulling sorrow out of each other, knot after knot after knot[10].

He lingers on her lips the way he always does. She tilts her head a little. One small touch of her tongue against his lips and they open for her, inviting her into a world or warmth again, holding each other close to their favorite place.

All around them the world spins on, oblivious and inexorable as before, unaware of this one small miracle unfolding on the sidewalk. Some stare, other smile as they pass them by. From the sidewalk someone takes a picture. Life continues, loud and careless-

But they can't hear it.

* * *

[1] ' Disbelief In Yourself Is Indispensable' Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Translated by Antonina W. Bouis, Albert C. Todd, and Yevgeny Yevtushenko

[2] bid

[3] Jamaica Kincaid, from The Autobiography of My Mother

[4] Beyonce's Lemonade,

[5] B. E. Barnes

[6] Anais Nin

[7] 'Eat, Pray, Love' Elisabeth Gilbert

[8] Salman Rushdie, Midnight children

[9] Beyonce's Lemonade poetry. Redemption

[10] Beyonce's Lemonade Poetry


	9. Chapter 9

_epilogue_

Coming home is a feeling that escapes definition. It's the fraction of an idea: of what it feels like to be found, after being lost for so long. An idea that cannot be contained. A state of mind, a country of tender lust, whisper-soft words.

It's making love with no secrets in between; like you've never been hurt, like you've never been left. A room of bright light, whisper soft quiet. It's rolling over finding her there (him there), messy hair and sleep-soft, eyes half open, squinting in the light, pouting.

It's the whole world in a breathless name: a whole world being remade in that name . It's never knowing your name until it falls from that one mouth.

Yes, just like that. Like need.

It feels… after so long of un-feeling, it _feels_ , reaching deeper than anything. Like warm water on cold-numb hands, unfreezing limbs: both pain and relief and the burning of sensation inhabiting the body again.

It's all the burdens of your shoulders being taken from, and waking up to the silence of a pair of shoes at the foot of the bed and to the silences of them going nowhere.

It's love like an ache, love etched into the lines of your palms, carved in skin, impossible to wash out. Love that runs through the spine and into the deep roots of whatever lines between the shadow and the soul. Along the heart, up from the roots of your teeth to the skin on your back, a whole body aching for that one mouth.

Just one.

It's to make life out of what lies between two bodies. To make love live, breathe. Feel its own skin through theirs, _lives_.

To be, not lovers, but love. Gentle love; fluttering of wings against the glass pane love. Licking the sweetness of someone's lips love; tender love whispering itself against cheeks, chest; skin empty for all its kisses, waiting.

It's laying down beside just one person. Fishing your body back from the mouth of a shark and treating it something gentle . Something soft. A long sigh pressed against open lips, between two bodies that have been melted together in gentle waves for hours, just being together.

 _How I've missed you, my love_.


End file.
